France, Spain, United Kingdom… Several European countries have been fighting against the heat wave for days due to the heat wave. Some have to deal with virulent fires.
Firefighters have been battling fires in southwestern France and the Iberian Peninsula for days. In Gironde, where the flames hit the municipalities of La Teste-de-Buch and Landiras, “the situation will remain difficult in the next 2-3 days”said on July 16 on franceinfo Arnaud Mandousse, communication officer for the department’s firefighters.
Nearly 3,150 hectares of forest burned in La Teste-de-Buchnot far from the Pilas dune: “Here, there were tunnels of fire, you have to imagine a ball of fire”, explains to AFP the commander Laurent Dellac, spokesperson for the firefighters. They had to fight “hand to hand” with the flames in Cazaux, a small town near the forest, up to “stop fire head”. All the inhabitants of Cazaux have been evacuated and there are no casualties. The origin of the fire was a broken down truck, which allegedly caught fire on a forest road. According to the Bordeaux prosecutor’s office, the vehicle should be appraised on July 18 in the afternoon.
In Landiras, 6,500 hectares were consumed since July 12. The prosecution announced that “the criminal thesis is privileged”. On the move in Calvados, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne told BFMTV that an electric car was the source of the fire. On Twitter, the prefect of New Aquitaine and Gironde called for caution: “In the past 24 hours, the SDIS has had to deal with 22 forest fire starts in the Gironde department. »she says.
Two dead in Portugal
The Portuguese were less lucky than the Girondins and count two dead victims of the fires : in particular the pilot of a water bomber plane which was fighting forest fires crashed on Friday July 15 near Vila Nova de Foz Coa, in the region of Guarda, in the north of the country, franceinfo report. To this date, the country has 30,000 hectares of forest gone up in smoke ; this is the highest figure since 2017, when forest fires killed around 100 people. This is not the only record: temperatures had reached 47°C in the north of the country. More than 900 firefighters are mobilized around ten active fires.
In neighboring Spain, two fires worry the authorities : that of Extremadura, a border region of Portugal, where thousands of hectares have been consumed in recent days, and in Mijas, in Andalusia in the south of the country. In the southwest of the country, most regions exceeded 40°C.
UK heat record
Further north, the UK is battling an unprecedented heat wave. The country issued a ” Red alert “ for Monday and next Tuesday, and the British population must prepare for temperatures never reached before, exceeding their record of 38.7°C in 2019. The NHS (public health service) has alerted on the increase in hospitalizations due to the heat.
Ireland and Belgium are also preparing for an increase in temperatures of up to 37°C or even 38°C.