TWTBACD Ch.41 - The Fires of 2047

Chapter 41

The Fires of 2047

2047 — Natural Catastrophe

2047: southern Europe burns, Vienna sees the smoke

The southern European fire season of 2047 was the event that broke the political stalemate in the EU climate emergency legislation that had been deadlocked for four years.

It began in July in southern Greece and spread — driven by wind patterns that the climate models had predicted and that the emergency planning had not adequately prepared for — across the Peloponnese, then to the Albanian coast, then to the Adriatic islands, then, in August, to the Dalmatian coast of Croatia. The smoke reached Belgrade in the second week of August. It reached Vienna on the eighteenth.

Dmitri Petrov, sixty-seven, stood at the river at dawn and looked at a sky that should have been blue and was orange. The Sava was visible through it but dimmed, the surface catching the diffused light in a way that made it look like the river was on fire rather than the sky.

His monitoring network recorded the air quality data automatically. He submitted it to Mila's institute, which was already processing thousands of readings across the region. He called Elena, who had retired the previous year and was visiting her sister in Novi Sad. 'The air is bad,' he said. 'Stay inside.'

'I know,' Elena said. 'I'm watching the news. Dmitri — they say the fire is coming north.'

'Not to us. The river—'

'The river is not a firebreak.'

'No,' he agreed. 'But the rain is coming. Three days.'

'Your model says three days.'

'And the model has been right about rain eleven consecutive times.'

She was quiet. He heard the television behind her — images from Croatia, from Greece, from places where the thing had already arrived.

'Come home when it's safe,' he said. 'I'll have the nets ready.'

The fires reached the outskirts of Slavonia before the rain arrived, exactly when Dmitri's model had predicted. Forty-three thousand hectares burned. Twelve people died in Serbia. The parliament passed emergency climate legislation within three weeks — not because of the twelve deaths, which were tragic, but because the smoke over Vienna had made the thing visible to people with the power to act, who had been finding it possible, until the smoke arrived, to look in a different direction.