The Annual Surprise

Parts of Spain are burning again. Greece is once more on fire alert. Storms have flooded roads, damaged homes and interrupted transport across several European countries. Rivers have overflowed. Slopes have collapsed. Electricity lines have fallen. Communities have been evacuated.

And Europe is surprised.

Again.

The explanation now arrives almost automatically.

Climate change.

Global warming.

Extreme weather.

The words are delivered before the water has gone down and sometimes before the fires have been extinguished. They sound serious, modern and suitably global. They also have one enormous administrative advantage: they move responsibility somewhere far away from the people and institutions that were supposed to prepare.

A blocked drainage system is local.

An unmaintained forest is local.

An illegal house in a flood zone is local.

A missing evacuation route is local.

Climate change is global.

Nobody in the municipality is personally responsible for global warming. Nobody in the ministry can be dismissed for the temperature of the planet. Nobody has to explain why the same village flooded for the fourth time, because the discussion has already moved to emissions, international agreements and the future of humanity.

Soon there will be official visits, serious faces, emergency meetings and promises that lessons will be learned. There will be aerial images of destroyed houses, flooded streets and firefighters trying to protect entire communities with equipment and staffing designed for a much smaller problem.

Then the water will go down. The fires will be extinguished. The television crews will leave.

The climate will still be blamed.

And most of the lessons will be safely stored until the same thing happens again.

This is not new

Spain has had fires for as long as anyone can remember. So have Greece, Portugal, Italy, France and the Balkans.

Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Romania, Czechia and other European countries have experienced major floods repeatedly. Mediterranean countries have dry vegetation, high summer temperatures and strong winds. Mountainous areas have landslides and mudslides. Rivers overflow. Coastal areas flood. Heavy snow isolates communities. Storms bring down trees and electricity lines.

None of this was discovered last Tuesday.

One may believe that climate change is making some of these events more frequent, more severe or more difficult to predict. That still does not explain why known drainage systems remain blocked, why construction continues in flood zones, why forests are badly maintained, why emergency access roads do not exist and why the same infrastructure is rebuilt in the same vulnerable place.

Climate change may influence the hazard.

It does not clean the drainage ditch.

It does not approve a building permit.

It does not cancel maintenance budgets.

It does not decide that one fire engine is enough for five municipalities.

It does not build houses beside a river and then act astonished when the river reaches them.

We have records. We have maps. We have satellite systems. We have weather services. We have universities, specialised agencies, risk registers, European programmes, national strategies and local emergency plans.

We are not suffering from a complete absence of information.

We are suffering from the belief that knowing about a risk is roughly the same as preparing for it.

It is not.

Climate change: the perfect suspect

Climate change has become the perfect suspect because it cannot attend the inquiry.

It cannot answer questions.

It cannot produce maintenance records.

It cannot explain why a warning system failed, why a reservoir was empty, why a forest road was inaccessible or why an evacuation plan existed only as a document.

It is abstract, enormous and politically useful.

Blaming global warming allows every level of government to sound concerned without admitting that the system itself may be badly designed, poorly maintained and fundamentally indifferent to the people it is supposed to protect.

The mayor can blame the climate.

The regional authority can blame the climate.

The national government can blame the climate.

The European institutions can blame the climate.

By the time everybody has finished blaming the climate, nobody has to blame the responsible authority.

This does not require anyone to deny that weather patterns may be changing. It requires only a basic distinction between the cause of a hazard and the cause of a disaster.

Heavy rain is a hazard.

A town flooding because its drainage network was neglected is a governance failure.

A dry summer is a hazard.

A fire spreading because vegetation was not managed, access roads were blocked and water points were unavailable is a preparedness failure.

A storm is a hazard.

Thousands of people losing electricity for days because the network has no resilience is an infrastructure failure.

The weather may begin the event.

The system decides how much damage follows.

Emergency response is not prevention

Europe is reasonably good at mobilising after something has gone wrong.

Firefighters arrive. Helicopters fly. The military may be called. Other countries send aircraft, pumps, vehicles or rescue teams. Temporary shelters are opened. Money is announced. Ministers visit.

These actions matter. They save lives.

But they are also the most visible and politically comfortable part of the process.

Prevention is less exciting.

Cleaning drainage systems does not produce impressive television footage. Maintaining forests does not create a dramatic press conference. Enforcing building restrictions in flood zones makes local politicians unpopular. Removing illegal construction creates angry voters. Replacing an old bridge costs money before the bridge has collapsed. Creating firebreaks annoys landowners. Increasing permanent emergency staffing is more expensive than praising exhausted firefighters after the disaster.

Climate change is a much easier subject for a speech.

It requires no local confrontation.

A politician can speak about global responsibility, future generations and international solidarity without explaining why the emergency generator had no fuel.

Prevention requires politicians to spend money today so that something less terrible happens in several years.

There is no ribbon to cut when a flood does not happen.

Nobody receives a medal because the water remained inside the drainage system.

A mayor cannot stand in front of a camera and display the houses that did not burn.

So we continue to reward response more visibly than prevention.

Then, after the disaster, we blame the climate for the consequences of decisions that were entirely human.

We rebuild in the same place

After many disasters, public authorities compensate people and rebuild infrastructure in almost exactly the same vulnerable locations.

The road is repaired where the landslide destroyed it.

The house is rebuilt where the river entered it.

The electricity line is restored through the same exposed corridor.

The drainage system is cleaned, but not enlarged.

The retaining wall is patched, but the slope above it remains unstable.

Sometimes rebuilding in the same place is unavoidable. Communities cannot simply be moved every time nature becomes unpleasant.

But sometimes the reason is less noble: relocation is politically difficult, construction interests are powerful, ownership is complicated and serious risk reduction costs more than a visible repair.

So we repair the damage and call it recovery.

When the same structure is damaged again, climate change becomes the explanation.

It is a useful explanation because it hides the more embarrassing possibility that the rebuilding itself was irresponsible.

A road placed again beneath an unstable slope is not defeated by global warming. It is defeated by the decision to rebuild it there without solving the known problem.

A house reconstructed in a floodplain has not been betrayed by the atmosphere. It has been betrayed by the authority that approved or financed the reconstruction.

Repairing the same damage repeatedly is not resilience.

It is a subscription service.

Responsibility is conveniently unclear

Disaster preparation usually crosses several administrative borders.

The municipality controls one part. The regional government controls another. A national agency owns the warning system. A private company manages a utility. Forest land may belong to the state, municipalities, companies and individuals. Roads, rivers, railways and drainage networks may each have different responsible bodies.

Everyone owns a piece of the risk.

Nobody owns the complete result.

Before the disaster, each organisation can say that it has performed its assigned task. The forest authority managed the forest. The road authority managed the road. The water authority monitored the river. The municipality issued permits. The emergency service maintained its response plan.

Then the fire crosses from the forest to the road, reaches the electricity network, blocks an evacuation route and enters a residential area.

At that moment, the neatly separated responsibilities meet reality.

The public does not care which authority owned which paragraph.

People want to know why the road was blocked, why the warning came late, why the telephone network failed and why there was only one usable evacuation route.

The answer is often that the event was exceptional because of climate change.

Perhaps it was exceptional.

But fragmented responsibility was not.

The inaccessible road was not.

The missing reserve equipment was not.

The absence of authority was not.

“Coordination” is often the word used when nobody has enough authority to ensure that the entire system works.

“Climate change” is increasingly the phrase used when nobody wants to admit that the coordination failed.

We plan for average conditions

Much of Europe’s infrastructure was designed around historical averages and minimum legal requirements.

A drainage system may be adequate for ordinary rain.

A fire service may be adequately staffed for one large fire.

A hospital may have enough capacity for an average summer.

A municipality may have enough pumps for its previous emergencies.

A forest road may be wide enough for normal maintenance vehicles.

Then an event exceeds the average, and climate change is immediately blamed.

Yet the purpose of emergency planning is not to prepare only for an average day.

If a system works only when conditions remain normal, it is not an emergency system. It is an ordinary system with a warning label.

The real problem begins when several incidents happen at once.

A second fire starts while aircraft are fighting the first. A storm cuts electricity while emergency services are already responding to flooding. A road is closed at the same time as the alternative route becomes congested. Several municipalities request the same limited equipment.

At that point, each individual organisation may still appear adequately prepared on paper.

The combined system fails.

Preparation must therefore be based not only on the average event, but on a credible bad event:

• several simultaneous fires;
• a flood combined with electricity failure;
• damaged communications;
• blocked roads;
• hospitals operating on generators;
• emergency crews working for several days;
• neighbouring regions unable to help because they face the same problem;
• contractors unavailable because everyone needs them at once.

Calling these combinations “unprecedented” does not make them impossible to imagine.

Calling them consequences of climate change does not remove the duty to prepare for them.

If authorities now believe that more severe events are likely, that should lead to more preparation, not fewer explanations.

Planning only for the normal incident is a sophisticated way of planning to be overwhelmed.

A warning is not a plan

Authorities often defend themselves by saying that warnings were issued.

This may be true.

There may even have been a climate-related alert, a heat alert, a flood alert, a storm alert and several official messages advising people to be careful.

But telling people that danger is approaching is only one small part of preparedness.

What are they supposed to do after receiving the warning?

Which road should they use?

Who evacuates people without cars?

Where do elderly people go?

What happens to hospitals, care homes, schools and prisons?

Who controls traffic?

What happens when mobile networks are congested?

Who has the keys to the emergency facility?

Are generators tested and fuelled?

Are evacuation centres supplied?

Can fire engines access the area?

Are local officials authorised to act without waiting for national approval?

Does the public understand the warning system?

A warning without prepared actions merely informs people that something bad may shortly happen to them.

It may also provide authorities with evidence that they issued a warning.

That is useful for the report afterward.

It is less useful for the person whose only evacuation route is already under water.

Europe is not poor

This is perhaps the least comfortable part.

Europe cannot honestly claim that it lacks the technical knowledge or financial capacity to prepare.

This is not a continent without engineers, satellites, aircraft, mapping systems, construction companies, universities or emergency professionals.

It is a continent capable of producing thousands of pages of climate policy while leaving a drainage ditch blocked.

It can hold international conferences on resilience while a local authority cannot identify who is responsible for maintaining an evacuation road.

It can announce ambitious targets for 2040 while a village floods in the same place where it flooded in 2014, 2018 and 2021.

We can build complex digital systems, regulate the shape of consumer products and publish strategies about adaptation.

Then a storm arrives and a major city discovers that water still flows downhill.

The failure is rarely caused by total ignorance.

It is caused by fragmented responsibility, deferred maintenance, weak enforcement, short political cycles and the assumption that emergency services will somehow compensate for everything else.

Global warming is then presented as the explanation for the final disaster.

It may be part of the explanation for the weather.

It is not an explanation for institutional neglect.

Firefighters cannot compensate for bad land management.

Rescue teams cannot compensate for construction in known flood zones.

Helicopters cannot compensate for the absence of firebreaks, accessible forest roads and maintained water points.

Civil protection cannot compensate indefinitely for decades of poor planning.

Emergency services are the final protective layer.

We increasingly use them as the first.

The system is not surprised

There is another uncomfortable truth.

The system is not really surprised.

Risk reports already exist.

Officials know which areas flood.

Fire services know where access is poor.

Utility companies know which parts of the network are vulnerable.

Local authorities know which slopes move, which drains block and which roads become unusable.

The surprise is performed for the public.

The official language suggests that nobody could reasonably have expected the event. It was extreme. Historic. Unprecedented. Linked to climate change. Beyond previous experience.

This language turns a known risk into an act of fate.

It protects institutions from a simple question:

What did you do after the last time?

The answer is often uncomfortable.

A study was commissioned.

A strategy was prepared.

Funding was requested.

Responsibility was discussed.

A project was announced.

A working group was created.

Then the next fire arrived.

What preparation would look like

Serious preparation would not eliminate fires, floods, storms or landslides.

It would reduce how easily they become catastrophes.

It would mean identifying repeatedly affected locations and treating them as permanent high-risk areas, not unfortunate exceptions.

It would mean maintaining rivers, forests, slopes, drainage systems, access roads and emergency water sources before the season begins.

It would mean inspecting whether evacuation routes still work in practice.

It would mean having reserve equipment, mutual assistance agreements and trained personnel available before the emergency call.

It would mean checking hospitals, care homes and other vulnerable facilities.

It would mean clear authority: one person or organisation responsible for ensuring that the complete arrangement works, not merely that every institution has submitted its plan.

It would also mean accepting an uncomfortable truth: some houses should not be rebuilt in the same place. Some construction should never be approved. Some roads need to be moved. Some areas require permanent restrictions. Some infrastructure needs more capacity than the legal minimum.

And yes, this costs money.

So does rebuilding the same bridge three times.

If governments genuinely believe that climate change is increasing the danger, then the case for preparation becomes even stronger.

The phrase cannot be used in two opposite ways.

It cannot be presented as proof that disasters will become worse and, at the same time, as an excuse for why nobody prepared for worse disasters.

If the risk is growing, mitigation must grow.

If the danger is known, capacity must grow.

If the official warnings are accurate, budgets, equipment, authority and maintenance must follow.

Otherwise, climate change is not being treated as a risk.

It is being used as an alibi.

Stop calling it unexpected

A particular fire may start in an unexpected place.

The precise hour of a flood may be uncertain.

Nobody can predict exactly which tree will fall, which road will collapse or which village will be evacuated.

But the category of event is not unexpected.

Southern Europe will have fires.

European rivers will flood.

Mountainsides will move.

Storms will damage electricity networks.

Heat will affect people, roads, railways and equipment.

Snow will block roads.

This will happen next year too.

Some of these events may become worse. Some may not. Experts will continue debating attribution, frequency, historical comparisons and long-term trends.

None of that cancels the duty of public institutions to perform their most basic function: protect people against risks that are already known.

The question is not whether Europe can stop nature from behaving like nature.

The question is whether European governments and institutions can stop using climate change to conceal the fact that their systems are often congenitally broken, fragmented, under-maintained and remarkably careless about the people they are supposed to protect.

The disaster may be natural.

The damage may be increased by weather trends.

But the blocked road was administrative.

The empty reservoir was administrative.

The missing firebreak was administrative.

The failed warning was administrative.

The badly approved construction was administrative.

The absence of preparation was administrative.

And by now, the annual surprise is getting rather difficult to believe.

Personal view.