A fresh wave of wildfires has roared through Portugal, Spain, France and Greece and forced thousands of families to flee their homes as another hot wave of fire has spread through the region
Emergency workers have battled on the job for days on 19,000 hectares of land, almost half of which is twice as large as Manhattan’s, and thermometers are nearly 40°C at least in some places.
The crisis is spreading quickly near Perpignan in southwestern France, where fire has spread to 1,650 hectares of land and threatens to destroy the village of Trevillach.
Residents said flames were within meters of homes in a matter of minutes before anyone realized the danger. Portugal had a better chance of containing its fire.
There are reports that the fire is about 80% contained in the northern parts of the country and about 13,000 hectares of woodland and brush have already burned since Tuesday morning.
There are also fires in Croatia’s island of Hvar and near Tale in Albania that have destroyed vineyards and forests and shrubland.
This is not happening in isolation. It comes soon after a historic heatwave in Europe just weeks ago, a record heatwave in Europe that scientists at World Weather Attribution said was one of the most severe on record for this region and driven by climate change.
The last heat wave caused more than 5,600 excess deaths, and France alone killed more than 2,000 people in a week Spain and Belgium killed more than 1,000 people. Fire officials have expressed alarm that this year’s fire season started well ahead of schedule.
Colonel Eric Belgioino, French fire service chief, said climate change has already begun to show up and it’s only early July, and residents around the fires should be on guard.
He said firefighting teams would need to prepare for a long and tough season and would have to find a solution to help in whatever way they could.
The Tour de France was not scheduled in advance for the third stage through the Pyrenees and race organizers did not need to organize fans in the route.
The political fallout from France’s government is adding to the uncertainty with the crisis response is not only a major political storm going on, but now France’s government is feeling political strain.
Fires erupted earlier in Marseille and the Gard region of France and around the Gard region burned thousands of hectares of land earlier and now the minority government of Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu faces a vote of no-confidence over its handling of the heatwave.
Europe is getting hotter and hotter as experts say, and more serious wildfires are more frequent and worse.
