Two people have died in wildfires in Spain that the country’s prime minister linked to a global warning, saying: “Climate change is killing.” The toll is on top of hundreds of heat-related deaths reported in the Iberian Peninsula, as high temperatures have gripped the continent in recent days and sparked fires from Portugal to the Balkan region. Some regions, including northern Italy, are also experiencing widespread droughts. Climate change is making such life-threatening extremes less rare – and heat waves have even come to places like Britain, which is bracing for potentially record-breaking temperatures. The hot weather in the UK was expected to be so intense this week that train operators warned it could warp the tracks and some schools set up swimming pools to help children cool off. In France, heat records were broken and hot winds complicated firefighting efforts in the southwest of the country. “The fire is literally exploding,” said Marc Vermeulen, the chief of the regional fire service who described tree trunks shattering as the flames consumed them, sending burning embers into the air and further spreading the flames. “We are dealing with extreme and extraordinary circumstances,” he said. Authorities evacuated more cities, moving another 14,900 people from areas at risk of being in the path of the fires and thick clouds of smoke. In total, more than 31,000 people have been forced to leave their homes and summer vacation spots in the Gironde region since the forest fires began on July 12. Three additional planes were sent to join six others already fighting the fires, collecting seawater in their tanks and making repeated runs through thick clouds of smoke, the interior ministry said on Sunday night. More than 200 reinforcements were dispatched to join the force of 1,500 firefighters battling around the clock to contain the blaze in the Gironde, where flames were closing in on prized vineyards and billowing smoke into the Arcachon sea basin famous for its oysters and beaches. Spain, meanwhile, reported a second death in two days as it battled its own blazes. The body of a 69-year-old rancher was found Monday in the same hilly area where a 62-year-old firefighter died a day earlier when he was trapped by flames in the northwestern province of Zamora. More than 30 wildfires around Spain have forced the evacuation of thousands of people and blackened 220 square kilometers (85 square miles) of forest and scrub. Passengers on a train through Zamora saw a terrifying, close-up blaze when their train stopped in the countryside. Video of the unplanned – and alarming – stop showed about a dozen passengers on a locomotive looking worried as they looked out the windows at flames engulfing both sides of the track. Climate scientists say heat waves are more intense, more frequent and longer because of climate change – and combined with drought have made it harder to fight fires. They say climate change will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive. “Climate change is killing,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said Monday during a visit to the Extremadura region, where firefighters have brought three major fires under control. “It’s killing people, it’s killing our ecosystems and our biodiversity.” Teresa Ribera, Spain’s ecological transition minister, described her country as “literally under fire” as she attended climate change talks in Berlin. It warned of a “frightening outlook for the next few days” – after more than 10 days of temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), with moderate cooling at night. Nearly 600 heat-related deaths have been reported in Spain and neighboring Portugal, where temperatures reached 47 C (117 F) earlier this month. Spain’s heat wave was forecast to ease on Tuesday, but the respite will be short-lived as temperatures rise again on Wednesday, especially in the dry western region of Extremadura. In Britain, officials issued the first extreme heat warning and the Met Office predicted that the record high of 38.7 C (101.7 F), set in 2019, could be broken. “Forty-one is not off the cards,” Met Office CEO Penelope Endersby said. “We even have about 43s in the model, but hopefully it won’t be as high as this.” France’s often temperate Brittany region swelled, with a record temperature of 35.8 C (96.4 F) measured in the port of Brest, surpassing the previous high of 35.2 C set since July 1949, the French meteorological service Meteo-France. The Balkan region expected the worst of the heat later this week, but has already seen sporadic fires. Early Monday, authorities in Slovenia said firefighters had managed to bring a blaze under control. Croatia sent a water-dropping plane there to help fight the flames after battling its own fires along the Adriatic Sea coast last week. A fire in Šibenik forced some people to evacuate their homes, but was later extinguished. In Portugal, very cold weather on Monday helped fire crews make progress against the fires. More than 600 firefighters attended four major fires in northern Portugal.
Leicester reported from Le Pecq. Associated Press reporters Danica Kirka and Jill Lawless in London, Geir Moulson in Berlin, Raquel Redondo in Madrid, Barry Hatton in Lisbon, Portugal and Jovana Gec in Belgrade, Serbia contributed to this report.
Follow AP’s climate coverage at
