The editorial eye. Editorial. From the Chernobyl cloud to the smoke from fires: pollution always knows no borders…
Pollution knows no borders. It was true on April 26, 1986 around Chernobyl, it is still true today with a giant fire in Belgium whose smoke is making eastern France cough. There is a size difference, however. Forty years ago, the authorities preferred silence to the truth. The episode of the contaminated cloud stopping right on the French border made the inhabitants of the regions where extravagant cesium-137 levels were measured a month later either laugh or cry. Wild boars and radioactive mushrooms demonstrated, in a tragicomic way, that toxic clouds have no concept of geography and don’t care much about customs officials. Four decades later, has France learned its lesson? A priori yes.
Know how to react
In the case before us, the prefectures concerned triggered an air pollution alert including one-off measures. Reduction of road speed, ban on burning and fireworks (which makes sense, right?) and ban on dust-generating work on construction sites… except in the case of watering to avoid dispersion. As the use of water is strictly limited, we can reasonably assume that no one was found to waste liters of H2O by humidifying rubble…
In short, in terms of reaction time, here or elsewhere in France, the authorities have made progress. But on the slope where the world is going, shouldn’t we consider moving up a gear? Train citizens in good reflexes? Issue clear instructions in the event of flooding, heatwaves, volatile smoke or other unpredictable phenomena? Alerting is good, knowing how to react is better: that’s the difference between experiencing a risk and preparing for it. Forty years after Chernobyl and with this climate totally out of whack, it might be time to think about it, right?
