Europe is at the mercy of fires while temperatures are at record highs. Thousands of people have fled their homes and firefighters are "battling" the flames.
British firefighters operated throughout the night to put out fires and engineers fought against time today to repair damage to railway tracks, a day after the UK experienced the highest temperatures ever recorded in the country.
London's fire service had its busiest day since World War II yesterday (Tuesday 19/7) when temperatures topped 40 degrees for the first time, resulting in fires that destroyed dozens of properties in the capital as well as outbreaks of fire in areas of low vegetation on the side of railway tracks and roads.
"We have nothing, everything is gone," said Timmy Stock, a resident who lost his home in the fire in the village of Wennington, east of London, according to the Athens News Agency.
Train services from London to the east coast of England were cancelled until at least the middle of today following a fire near Peterborough in central England that resulted in the destruction of equipment and infrastructure.
The British Met Office said a new record high temperature of 40.3 degrees Celsius was recorded in Conningsby in central England yesterday, with 34 areas across the country beating the previous record of 38.7 degrees set in 2019. Forecasters are predicting a cooler day today.
Fires have broken out across Europe this month, hitting Greece, France, Spain, France, Turkey, Italy and Portugal while being fuelled by the increasingly hot and dry climate that scientists link to climate change.
In France, where firefighters in the Gironde region in the southwest of the country have been trying since July 12 to bring huge forest fires under control, Agriculture Minister Marc Fesnaud said more money needed to be invested to tackle such threats.
"We are dealing with quite an unusual situation," he said, referring to the damage in Brittany and southern France. President Emmanuel Macron was expected to visit the region today.
Smoke from the fires even reached Paris
In Gironde, two huge fires have burned more than 190,000 acres of forest and 37,000 people have been forced to flee their homes in six days. Smoke from these fires reached as far as Paris, more than 500 kilometres away, and affected air quality there, the air quality observatory in the Paris region said late yesterday.
In Tuscany, Italy, firefighting forces battled a blaze that forced hundreds of residents to flee their homes and resulted in exploding gas tanks, while smoke from a fire in northeastern Italy forced the Fincantieri shipyard to suspend the operation of a unit 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 heatwave alert, warning of serious health risks due to the weather conditions, up from five yesterday. The total will rise to 14 tomorrow, including Rome, Milan and Florence.
Temperatures are expected to reach 40 degrees Celsius in much of northern and central Italy this week, as well as in the south, Apulia, Sardinia and Sicily.
Today, in Tuscany, a fire that broke out Monday night continued to burn near the town of Lucca, having already destroyed 5,600 acres of forest.
In the Friuli Venezia Giulia region, residents were forced to stay in their homes because of the thick smoke from a fire that broke out yesterday in the Carso region, on the border with Croatia and Slovenia. The fire resulted in the Fincantieri shipyard closing its facilities in Monfalcone.
In Spain, which has been hit by a wave of extreme heat for days, forest fires were raging late yesterday in the province of Thamora (north-west). According to local authorities, nearly 6,000 people were forced to flee their homes which destroyed several thousand acres of vegetation.
In Portugal, 2,000 firefighters were battling the fires last night. The two fires of greatest concern are in the northern part of the country. Nearly 800 firefighters were operating on one of them yesterday while three villages were evacuated. Further temperature rise is expected in the country today.
Source: newsbeast
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