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Emergency services in several countries continued their fight against extensive forest fires on Sunday in persistent heat and drought. These have spread over thousands of hectares of land in Spain, Greece and France. Thousands of people were once again brought to safety with temperatures locally exceeding 40 degrees.
Up to 45.7 degrees
In Spain, helicopters dropped water on the blazes while scorching heat and often mountainous terrain made life difficult for firefighters. The national weather agency Aemet issued a heat warning for Sunday and predicted highs of 42 degrees in Aragon, Navarre and La Rioja in the north. The authority said the heat wave would end on Monday. The temperatures remained “unusually high”.
Spain has been experiencing a heat wave for almost a week with highs of 45.7 degrees. In the province of Malaga, forest fires raged into Sunday night, also affecting residents near Mijas, a popular tourist destination.
659 people died in Portugal alone
In Portugal, where temperatures dropped over the weekend, there were two wildfires in the north on Sunday, authorities said. The Portuguese Ministry of Health announced on Saturday evening that 659 people had died as a result of the heat wave in the past seven days, most of them elderly people. On Thursday, temperatures had exceeded 40 degrees Celsius in several regions and 47 degrees Celsius at a weather station in the central district of Vizeu.
On the southern French Atlantic coast, other people were brought to safety from a forest fire on Sunday night. The resurgence of the fire again endangered campsites in the Teste-de-Buch area south of Bordeaux, the responsible prefecture said. According to figures from Saturday evening, more than 14,000 people in the area and in nearby Landiras had to leave their homes or holiday resorts due to fires. The flames destroyed 10,500 hectares of land in the two areas. The fires on dry ground were driven by fierce and variable winds.
Firefighters had been trying unsuccessfully to get the flames under control since Tuesday. According to the prefecture, the situation at Teste-de-Buch remains unfavourable. At Landiras, the situation is stable, at least in some areas of the fire edge.
In Greece, more than 150 firefighters were busy on Sunday fighting a fire that had set fire to forest and agricultural land near Rethymno on the island of Crete since Friday. The flames were fanned by strong winds. The local fire department said the fire had been partially contained.
The Greek Fire Service continues to assess the risk of forest fires in many parts of Greece as “very high”. On Monday, the Attica region with the capital Athens as well as the islands of Euboea, Crete, Lesbos and Samos and the north-east of the Peloponnese peninsula were particularly affected, the fire brigade tweeted on Sunday. From Saturday to Sunday 119 forest fires were registered in Greece. Most fires are extinguished fairly quickly, but some grow into large fires.
Source: Nachrichten
