In Spain, which has been hit by an extreme heat wave for days, forest fires were raging late yesterday in the province of Tamora. According to local authorities, nearly 6,000 people were forced to leave their homes
British firefighters worked through the night to put out blazes and engineers raced against the clock today to repair damage to railway tracks, a day after the UK experienced its hottest temperatures on record.
London’s fire service had its busiest day since World War II yesterday as temperatures topped 40 degrees for the first time, sparking blazes that destroyed dozens of properties in the capital as well as blazes in low-lying areas on the side railway tracks and roads.
“We have nothing, everything is lost“, said Timothy Stocka resident who lost his home in the fire in the village of Wennington, east of London.
Train services from London to England’s east coast were canceled until at least the middle of today after a fire near Peterborough in central England damaged equipment and infrastructure.
Britain’s Met Office said a new record temperature of 40.3 degrees Celsius was recorded in Coningsby in central England yesterday, with 34 areas across the country beating the previous record of 38.7 degrees set in 2019. For today, forecasters are predicting a cooler day.
Wildfires have been raging across Europe this month, hitting Greece, France, Spain, Turkey, Italy and Portugal as they are fueled by an increasingly hot and dry climate that scientists have linked to climate change.
In France, where firefighters in the Gironde region of the southwestern country have been struggling since July 12 to bring massive forest fires under control, Agriculture Minister Marc Fenault said more money needed to be invested to deal with such threats.
“We are dealing with a rather unusual situation“, he said, referring to the damage caused in Brittany and southern France. President Emmanuel Macron was expected to visit the region today.
In the Gironde, two huge fires have burned more than 190,000 hectares of forest while 37,000 people have been forced to leave their homes in six days. Smoke from those fires reached Paris, more than 500 kilometers away, and affected air quality there, the Paris-area air quality watchdog said late yesterday.
In Tuscany, Italy, firefighters battled a blaze that forced hundreds of residents from their homes and caused gas tanks to explode, while smoke from a wildfire in northeastern Italy forced shipyard Fincantieri to suspend operations at a plant with 3,000 workers. .
Fires have broken out in many parts of Italy this week as temperatures continue to rise. Nine cities are on the highest heat alert level, which warns of severe health risks due to the weather, up from five yesterday. Their total number will increase to 14 tomorrow, including Rome, Milan and Florence.
Temperatures are expected to reach 40C across much of northern and central Italy this week, as well as in the south, in Puglia, Sardinia and Sicily.
Today, in Tuscany, a fire that broke out on Monday night continued to burn near the town of Lucca, having already destroyed 5,600 hectares of forest.
In the Friuli Venezia Giulia region, residents were forced to stay in their homes due to thick smoke from a fire that broke out yesterday in the Carso region, on the border with Croatia and Slovenia. The fire caused the Fincantieri shipyard to close its facilities in Monfalcone.
In Spain, which has been hit by an extreme heat wave for days, forest fires were raging late yesterday in the province of Tamora (northwest). According to local authorities, nearly 6,000 people were forced to leave their homes, which destroyed many thousands of hectares of vegetation.
In Portugal, 2,000 firefighters were fighting the fires last night. The two fires that cause the most concern are in the northern part of the country. Almost 800 firefighters were working on one of them yesterday, while three villages were evacuated. A further rise in temperature is expected in the country today.
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