Wildfires and extreme heat grip Spain, France as Europe swelters

Firefighters in Spain and France were still battling major wildfires on Wednesday as another spell of intense heat kept much of southern Europe under pressure. In Spain, one large blaze in Guadalajara province had begun to ease, giving some residents a chance to return home, but authorities said the broader wildfire risk remained very high across much of the country. The situation in France was more severe in parts of the southwest, where two firefighters died on Tuesday after their truck was engulfed in flames in the Gironde region, according to the report cited by Dawn from Reuters. French authorities have been urging people to take precautions in areas affected by heatwaves, including avoiding barbecues, as officials say human activity is behind the vast majority of wildfires, whether by accident or otherwise. In Spain, the country’s worst fire so far this year has burned an estimated 32,000 hectares in the Guadalajara area, the feed says. It started to stabilise on Tuesday after forcing evacuations in 34 municipalities and confinement orders in 14 others. Castilla-La Mancha’s INFOCAM fire service said residents in five villages were allowed to return home, although some restrictions were still in place. The scale of the response underlines how quickly fire conditions can shift when heat, dry land and wind combine. The wildfire risk comes during one of the hottest stretches Europe has faced this summer. The continent has already gone through three close-together heatwaves this year, and scientists have long warned that human-driven climate change is making heatwaves, droughts and wildfires more intense and more likely. Europe is also the world’s fastest-warming continent, a trend that is showing up not only in fire seasons but in damaging weather extremes more broadly. That contrast is visible across the region. While Spain and France are dealing with fire, the Western Balkans have recently faced a different threat, with hailstorms injuring several people in North Macedonia and eastern Kosovo, according to the feed. It is another reminder that extreme weather is not arriving in just one form. Reuters’ Climate Monitor, cited in the summary, showed the average high temperature across Western Europe forecast at 26.6C, about three degrees above the normal high for July 22 based on the 1961-1990 period. That kind of temperature gap matters because it can push already stressed landscapes closer to ignition, complicate firefighting and make recovery harder for people who have been evacuated. The human toll is also becoming harder to ignore. The feed notes that intense heat has been linked to thousands of excess deaths in the May-to-June period, adding urgency to warnings from health and emergency officials. But for communities in the path of the current fires, the immediate concerns are more basic: whether homes are safe, whether crews can contain the flames and how long the current heat will last. What remains unclear is how quickly conditions will improve. The Guadalajara blaze was reported to be stabilising, but the wider threat picture across Spain and France depends on weather, wind and whether new fires break out. For now, emergency services remain on alert as southern Europe endures another dangerous stretch of summer.

Source: Dawn World - https://www.dawn.com/news/2017665/spain-france-struggle-with-wildfires-as-heat-grips-europes-south