Firefighters continued their fierce fight once morest several fires in France and the Iberian Peninsula on Friday. Temperatures remained stifling, while further north the UK was on red alert and feared it might top 40 degrees next week.
Fanned by this extreme heat, two fires have burned some 7,700 hectares since Tuesday in the south-west of France, where “the criminal thesis” is now “privileged”. Another declared itself near the very touristy Dune du Pilat, in the same region.
Triggered Thursday followingnoon 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 fixed .
Thousands of acres on fire
In Portugal, more than 2,000 firefighters were still hard at work trying to overcome four major outbreaks in the north and center.
According to civil protection, these fires left one dead and around 60 injured.
The most worrying of the fires in Spain was that of Extremadura, a border region of Portugal, where thousands of hectares have burned in recent days.
Another forest fire worried the authorities in Minjas, just a few dozen kilometers from Malaga, Andalusia, where 2,300 people from surrounding communities were dislodged, said the emergency services.
While on the other side of the Mediterranean, one person has died in the fires ravaging remote forested regions of northern Morocco, authorities said.
UK red alert
In the UK, which first issued an ‘extreme heat’ red alert for Monday and Tuesday, people are preparing for potentially never-before-seen temperatures.
Ireland and Belgium are also expecting a scorching start to the week with temperatures that can rise to 32 and 38 degrees respectively locally.
