Continued fires in southwestern Europe, UK on red alert

This heat wave is the second in barely a month. The multiplication of these phenomena is a direct consequence of global warming according to scientists, with greenhouse gas emissions increasing in intensity, duration and frequency.

In Portugal, affected for a week by scorching temperatures and a series of fires, the emergency services identified a dozen active fires on Friday evening, which mobilized more than 900 firefighters.

According to civil protection, these fires killed two people, including the pilot of a water bomber – a medium-sized plane, of the FireBoss type – which crashed in the early evening while fighting forest fires near Vila Nova de Foz Coa, in the northern region of Guarda.

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At the same time, also in northern Portugal, one of the most worrying fires was raging in the municipality of Baiao, a hilly area in the Porto region, upstream from the Douro, the great river that crosses it.

“Every year in this season there are fires here, but usually it’s not that bad“, testified to AFP Maria, a 71-year-old retired teacher living in the village of Eiriz.

As of July 15, just over 30,000 hectares have gone up in smoke in Portugal since the beginning of the year, the highest figure on this date since 2017, a year marked by violent forest fires which had killed a hundred people. .

Before dropping slightly on Friday, temperatures had reached 47 degrees the day before in the north, a record for a month of July in this country.

– “A ball of fire” –

In the south-west of France, fanned by this extreme heat, two fires have ravaged some 7,700 hectares since Tuesday, one south of Bordeaux where “the criminal thesis“is now”privileged” and the other in the forest backed by the very touristy Pilat dune.

“Here there were tunnels of fire, you have to imagine a ball of fire“, told AFP Commander Laurent Dellac, who spoke from La Teste-de-Buch.

These disasters, which mobilize a thousand firefighters, have since Tuesday resulted in the evacuation of 11,000 people.

“I’ve never seen this and it feels like it’s post-apocalyptic, really, it’s falling everywhere, on cars, it’s disturbing“, said Karyn, a resident of Cazaux, a village near the Dune du Pilat.

Triggered Thursday afternoon by the passage of a train which would have generated sparks, another fire spread over 1,205 hectares (without necessarily consuming them) near Avignon, in the south-east, before being circumscribed .

– More than 40 degrees in Spain –

On the Spanish side, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said in a tweet very “attentive to the evolution of the active fires which led to the evacuation of several municipalities“, evoking “an extreme risk in the face of very high temperatures“.

The most worrying of these fires was that of Extremadura, a border region of Portugal, where thousands of hectares have burned in recent days. This one knew aunfavorable development” and threatened the Monfragüe National Park, a natural area protected for its biodiversity.

Another forest fire worried the authorities in Mijas, just a few dozen kilometers from Malaga, in Andalusia (south), where 2,300 people from surrounding communities were dislodged, according to the emergency services.

At 4:20 p.m. (2:20 p.m. GMT), it was 43.9 degrees in the province of Badajoz, in the southwest, and most regions had mercury above 40 degrees.

Across the Mediterranean, one person has died in fires ravaging remote forested areas in northern Morocco, authorities said.

– UK red alert –

This heat wave will extend further north from the weekend.

In the UK, which issued a red alert for the first time”extreme heat“For Monday and Tuesday, the population is preparing for potentially never before reached temperatures.

“We hoped never to come to this situation, but, for the first time, we have forecasts that exceed 40°C in the UK“, said Dr. Nikos Christidis, a climate specialist. The absolute temperature record in this country (38.7 degrees) dates from 2019.

The NHS public health service has warned of a “bondheat-related hospitalizations.

Ireland and Belgium are also expecting a scorching start to the week with temperatures reaching 32 and 38 degrees respectively locally.

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The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has also warned about poor air quality, an aspect “unfortunately omitted from these heat waves“, according to the scientific manager Lorenzo Labrador, who evokes the “high concentrations of air pollutants and ozone levels“.