You forest fires spread further across the southwest of the France this Saturday (16), with almost 10,000 hectares on fire in the Gironde region. On Friday (15), 7,300 hectares were affected
More than 12,200 people were evacuated from the area on Saturday morning and more than 1,000 firefighters are trying to control the fires, regional authorities in Nouvelle-Aquitaine and Gironde said in a statement.
“Given the weather conditions and the important fire risks, the authorities have temporarily blocked access to the forest area for professional and leisure activities,” the statement said.
Forest fires have raged in France in recent weeks, as well as in other European countries such as Portugal and Spain as temperatures rose during the summer in the Northern Hemisphere.
The fires around the town of Teste-de-Buch in the Gironde have stabilized, reaching more than 3,000 hectares since the beginning of the crisis.
In the nearby town of Landiras, where 6,500 hectares were burned and 2,200 people evacuated, fires continued to spread overnight, pushed southwest by strong winds.
“We have a fire that will continue to spread until it is stabilized,” Vincent Ferrier, deputy mayor of Langon in the Gironde, told a news conference on Saturday.
In neighboring Spain, firefighters were also battling a series of wildfires on Saturday after days of unusually high temperatures that reached 45.7C.
The nearly week-long heat wave caused 360 deaths related to high temperatures, according to data from the Carlos III Health Institute.
More than 3,000 people were evacuated from their homes due to a massive fire near Mijas, a town in Malaga province that is popular with tourists from northern Malaga. Europe , according to the region’s emergency services. Many were taken to shelters at a provincial sports center.
“Police drove up and down the road with sirens on and everyone was told to leave. Just go out. There were no instructions where to go,” said 83-year-old British retiree John Pretty.
“It’s scary… because you don’t know what’s going on,” said Belgian resident Jean-Marie Vandelanotte, 68.
Elsewhere in Spain, the fires raged in the region of Extremadura, near the border with Portugal, where members of Spain’s Military Emergency Unit were deployed to help fight the blaze, and in central Castile and Leon.
There was some respite for firefighters in Portugal, where temperatures dropped across most of the country on Saturday after reaching around 40°C in recent days.
“We had big fires and we don’t want them to be reactivated again… We will keep extreme vigilance this weekend”, said the commander of the Emergency and Civil Protection Authority, André Fernandes.
A total of 39,550 hectares were devastated by forest fires from the beginning of the year to mid-June, more than triple the area devastated by fires in the same period last year, data from the Institute for the Conservation of Nature and Forests showed.
An area equivalent to nearly two-thirds burned during the fires in the last week.
Portugal’s Ministry of Health said 238 people died as a result of the heat wave between 7 and 13 July, most of them elderly people with underlying illnesses.
At the UK the National Weather Service issued its first “extreme heat” red alert for parts of England on Monday and Tuesday.
With possibly record temperatures expected, the government’s emergency response committee is expected to meet later this Saturday. The highest temperature recorded in Great Britain was 38.7ºC, recorded in Cambridge on 25 July 2019.
Source: CNN Brasil
I’m James Harper, a highly experienced and accomplished news writer for World Stock Market. I have been writing in the Politics section of the website for over five years, providing readers with up-to-date and insightful information about current events in politics. My work is widely read and respected by many industry professionals as well as laymen.
