Report】In Yamanashi, 84 Tokyo Domes burned… “Mega wildfires” raged until May due to the “once-in-30-year low rainfall!

The white smoke of the great fire engulfed the entire mountain.

Please take a look at the photo above. The white smoke spreading across the entire mountain is smoke from the massive wildfire. The location is Ougiyama (1138 m above sea level), which straddles the cities of Uenohara and Otsuki in Yamanashi Prefecture. A man in his 70s who lives nearby said, “It’s right behind my house.

I was surprised to see smoke rising from the mountain right behind my house, which I am used to climbing. I have lived here for 72 years, but I have never seen a wildfire of this magnitude.

A resident continued, “Since last December, it has been raining almost all the time.

There has been almost no rain since last December. It has been so dry that there are no frost pillars in the fields. This is very unusual.

The fire broke out on January 8. It took 17 days to suppress the fire, which burned 396 hectares (about 84 times the size of the Tokyo Dome). At one point, the fire reached as close as 30 meters from the houses at the foot of the mountain. Fortunately, there was no damage, but evacuation orders were issued for 297 residents in 215 households.

The cause of the fire is still unknown, but as one resident said, the extreme dryness of the winter is surely a contributing factor.

The average precipitation for the four weeks from the end of December last year was “once in 30 years” in the Tokai, Kinki, Shikoku, and southern Kyushu regions,” he said. Maebashi City in Gunma Prefecture, Kofu City in Yamanashi Prefecture, and Nagoya City in Aichi Prefecture have recorded 0 mm of precipitation,” said a reporter from the society department of a national newspaper.

Large wildfires have been burning not only in Yamanashi Prefecture, but also in Kiryu City, Gunma Prefecture, and Fujieda City, Shizuoka Prefecture, since the beginning of January. According to the Forestry Agency, an average of about 1,200 wildfires have occurred annually over the past six years, with each fire causing about 210 million yen in damage. The characteristic feature of these fires is that they are large-scale. Last February, a wildfire in Ofunato, Iwate Prefecture, burned for about 40 days, destroying 3,370 hectares of land (about 720 times the size of Tokyo Dome). The fires have become mega wildfires.

The increase in the scale of wildfires is said to be related to global warming. Yoshihiro Tachibana, professor of the Graduate School of Bioresources at Mie University, says, “The Arctic sea ice is melting.

As sea ice in the Arctic melts, cold air is flowing over Japan more easily. The cold air from the north collides with warm air from the south, causing strong winds to blow. Because the ground is dry, partly due to the extreme heat, once a fire starts, it can easily spread due to the strong winds as well. Global warming makes the ground dry and prone to strong winds throughout the year. It is no wonder that large wildfires can erupt anywhere at any time.

The Japan Meteorological Agency warns that caution is needed until May, when precipitation is low.