More than 1,000 firefighters, supported by bomber aircraft, have been battling since Tuesday to control two wildfires in southwestern France that have been fanned by scorching heat, dusty conditions and strong winds. While temperatures dropped slightly in Portugal, they were expected to exceed 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) in some areas, with five areas on red alert and more than 1,000 firefighters battling 17 blazes, authorities said. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register In Spain, a new fire broke out in the south of the country after the flames in the west last week. More than 400 people were evacuated from the hills of Mijas, a town popular with northern European tourists in the province of Malaga. Beachgoers in Torremolinos, about 20km away, could see plumes of smoke rising above the hotels lining the coast. Meanwhile, the worst drought in more than 70 years has reduced Italy’s largest river, the Po, to little more than a trickle in places, with temperatures expected to rise next week. Officials are worried about the impact on people’s health and healthcare systems already challenged by the COVID-19 pandemic as scorching heat sweeps the continent, with warnings of worse to come in Britain in particular. The World Meteorological Organization said the heat wave will worsen air quality, especially in towns and cities. “The stable and stagnant atmosphere acts as a lid to trap atmospheric pollutants, including particulate matter,” Lorenzo Labrador, the WMO’s science officer, told a news conference in Geneva. “These result in degraded air quality and adverse health effects, particularly for vulnerable people.” Portugal’s Health Minister Marta Temido said on Thursday that the health system faced a “particularly worrying” week because of the heat and said some hospitals were overwhelmed. From July 7 to July 13, Portugal recorded 238 excess deaths due to the heat, the country’s health authority DGS announced. Spain recorded 84 excess deaths attributed to extreme temperatures in the first three days of the heat wave, according to the National Epidemiological Center database.

UK WARNING

A church is pictured during sunset as a heat wave hits Europe, in Oisy-le-Verger, France, July 14, 2022. REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol
read more Britain’s weather service issued its first red warning for “extreme heat” for parts of England on Monday and Tuesday. read more “Exceptional, possibly record-breaking temperatures are likely early next week,” Met Office chief meteorologist Paul Gundersen said. “Nights are also likely to be extremely hot, especially in urban areas,” he said. “This is likely to lead to widespread impacts on people and infrastructure.” The highest recorded temperature in Britain was 38.7 C (101.7 F) recorded in Cambridge on 25 July 2019. Hannah Cloke, a climate expert at Britain’s University of Reading, said the heatwave showed that climate change is here and there is an urgent need to adapt. “We’re seeing these problems now and they’re going to get worse. We have to do something now,” he told Reuters. “It’s harder to deal with these types of temperatures in the UK because we’re just not used to them.” In Portugal, the highest temperature on Thursday was recorded in the northern town of Pinhao at 47 C (116.6 F), just below the record. Raymond Loadwick, 73, a pensioner from Britain who now lives in the Portuguese district of Leiria, was forced to leave his home with his dog Jackson when flames started to burn a hill filled with highly flammable eucalyptus and pine trees on Tuesday. When he returned a day later, his white house was untouched, but the vegetation around it had turned to ash and its fruit trees had burned. Loudwick fears that fires will happen more often in the future: “You have to be on your guard,” he told Reuters. In France’s Gironde region, 11,300 people have been evacuated since fires broke out around Dune du Pilat and Landiras. About 7,350 hectares (18,000 acres) of land have burned. Authorities said the fires were not yet contained. Elsewhere in Spain, fires burning in parts of Extremadura, which borders Portugal, and the central region of Castile and León forced the evacuation of four more small villages late Thursday and Friday. The flames now threaten a 16th-century monastery and a national park. Several hundred people have been evacuated since the fires started and 7,500 hectares of forest have been destroyed in the two areas. In Catalonia in the northeast, authorities suspended camping and sports activities around 275 towns and villages to prevent fire risks and restricted agricultural work involving machinery. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register Additional reporting by Benoit Van Overstraeten in Paris, Emma Pinedo, Elena Rodriguez and Christina Thykjaer in Madrid, Hannah McKay in Torremolinos, William James in London and Emma Farge in Geneva. Alison Williams writes. Edited by Frances Kerry and Hugh Lawson Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.