More than 12,200 people had been evacuated from France’s Gironde region by Saturday morning as more than 1,000 firefighters tried to bring the flames under control, regional authorities said in a statement. Fires have ravaged France in recent weeks, as well as other European countries, including Portugal and Spain. Almost 10,000 hectares of land were set on fire in the Gironde region on Saturday, compared to 7,300 hectares on Friday.
The flames were also being fought in Spain
In neighboring Spain, firefighters were battling a series of blazes on Saturday after days of unusually high temperatures that reached 45.7 degrees Celsius. A fire is seen moving near a residential area in Alhaurin de la Torre, Malaga, Spain, on Saturday. (Gregorio Marrero/The Associated Press) The nearly week-long heat wave has caused 360 heat-related deaths, according to data from the Carlos III Health Institute. More than 3,000 people have been forced from their homes by a large fire near Mijas, a town in the southern province of Malaga popular with northern European tourists, the region’s emergency services said in a tweet early Saturday. Many were taken to a shelter in a provincial sports center. “The police were going up and down the street with their sirens on and they told everyone to leave. Just leave. There are no instructions where to go,” said British pensioner John Pretty, 83. “It’s scary … because you don’t know what’s going on,” said 68-year-old Belgian resident Jean-Marie Vandelanotte. A wildfire near Casas de Miravete, Spain appears to be burning on Saturday. (Isabel Infantes/Reuters) Elsewhere in Spain, thick black clouds of smoke rose into the air near Casas de Miravete in the Extremadura region as helicopters dropped water on the flames that have burned 3,000 hectares, forced the evacuation of two villages and threatened to reach the Monfrague national park. Fires were also burning in the central region of Castile and León and in Galicia to the north.
Easing temperature in Portugal
There was some respite for firefighters in Portugal, where temperatures plunged across most of the country on Saturday after reaching around 40 degrees Celsius in recent days. A helicopter was seen dropping water Saturday on a fire near the village of Bustelo in northern Portugal. (Patricia De Melo Moreiera/AFP/Getty Images) “We’ve had big fires and we don’t want them to reactivate… We will maintain extreme vigilance this weekend,” Emergency and Civil Protection Authority commander Andre Fernandez told reporters. A total of 39,550 hectares were destroyed by fires from the beginning of the year to mid-June, more than three times the area destroyed by fires in the same period last year, according to data from Portugal’s Institute for the Conservation of Nature and Forests. An area equivalent to nearly two-thirds of that has burned during wildfires in the past week. Portugal’s health ministry announced that 238 people died as a result of the heat between July 7 and 13, most of them elderly people with underlying illnesses.
Forest fire in Morocco
Across the Mediterranean from Europe, fires in Morocco have ripped through more than 2,000 hectares of forest in the northern regions of Larache, Ouazzane, Taza and Tetouan, killing at least one person, local authorities said. Firefighters battle a forest fire near the Moroccan town of Ksar el-Kebir in the Larache region on Friday. (Fadel Senna/AFP/Getty Images) More than 1,000 households were evacuated. Planes carrying water helped extinguish most of the fires by Friday night, although firefighters were still trying to extinguish three hot spots near Larache. In Britain, the national weather forecaster issued its first red warning of “extreme heat” for parts of England on Monday and Tuesday. The highest recorded temperature in Britain was 38.7C, recorded in Cambridge on 25 July 2019.
