More than 20 wildfires raged in Portugal and several burned in western Spain on Wednesday, threatening villages and disrupting tourists’ vacations amid a heat wave that forecasters expect will lift temperatures above 40 degrees. Celsius.
In France, around 800 firefighters, supported by six bomber planes, were battling two forest fires in the southwest, which have already prompted the evacuation of thousands of campers, said Gironde mayor Fabienne Buccio.
In the Algarve region of southern Portugal, popular with tourists, authorities blocked access to the luxury resort and Quinta do Lago golf course as thick clouds of smoke rose from a nearby area.
“A fire is entering an urban area, with a lot of dry vegetation that, with small sparks, quickly becomes a secondary fire. We are concerned and that is what we are telling people,” said Richard Marques, a civil protection official in the area.
In the central district of Leiria, north of Lisbon, where temperatures reached 45 degrees Celsius (113°F), authorities blocked a major highway. Flames and thick smoke could be seen on both sides of the road as helicopters and aircraft sprayed water.
Residents who were not evacuated poured water on the roofs of their homes.
About 800 firefighters are fighting two active fires in the area, while across the mainland 2,124 firefighters, supported by 28 planes, are fighting 24 forest fires.
Almost all of mainland Portugal is on red alert for extreme heat conditions, with maximum temperatures of 45ºC in the central districts of Santarém and Leiria, the meteorological institute IPMA reported. The country’s record temperature of 47.3°C was recorded in 2003.
evacuated camps
More than 2,700 hectares have been burned so far in the Gironde region of France, Mayor Buccio told BFM TV. The larger of the two fires took place in the town of Landiras, south of Bordeaux, where roads were closed and 500 residents were evacuated.
The other is along the Atlantic coast, near the iconic “Dune du Pilat” — the tallest sand dune in Europe — located in the Arcachon Bay area, above which heavy clouds of dark smoke were seen rising in the sky.
This fire led to the preventive evacuation of 6,000 people from five surrounding camps. They were taken to shelter at a local exhibition center.
“Other campers woke us up around 4:30 in the morning. We had to leave immediately and quickly choose what to take with us,” Christelle, one of the evacuated tourists, told BFM TV.
On the eve of Bastille Day, the Gironde prefecture banned all fireworks until Monday in towns and villages close to the forests.
The World Meteorological Organization warned on Tuesday that the heat wave is spreading and intensifying across much of Europe.
With man-made climate change triggering droughts, the number of extreme wildfires is expected to increase by 30% over the next 28 years, according to a February 2022 UN report.
Scorching temperatures also swept across China’s vast Yangtze River basin on Wednesday; firefighters battled a forest fire near the tourist town of Datca, Turkey; and Texas energy demand hit an all-time high as consumers turned on their air conditioners to escape the heat.
In the western region of Extremadura, Spain, on the border with Portugal, firefighters evacuated a few hundred residents overnight as a precaution and continued fighting a fire that on Tuesday raged in the province of Salamanca, in the region of Castile and Leon.
Parts of the regions of Extremadura, Andalusia and Galicia were on red alert for extreme heat, Spain’s AEMET meteorological service said, adding that temperatures could surpass the previous record of 47.4C for all of Spain set in August 2021 and of 40.7 C in the capital Madrid.
Source: CNN Brasil
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