Southwest Europe suffocates and continues to burn
In the south-west of France, two fires have burned more than 7,000 hectares since Tuesday. The UK is bracing for ‘extreme’ heat this weekend.
In the south-west of France, two fires have burned more than 7,000 hectares since Tuesday.
AFP
Thousands of firefighters continued their relentless battle against blazes in France and the Iberian Peninsula on Friday, where temperatures remained sweltering on Friday as the UK further north prepared for “extreme” heat this weekend. .
These fires, which mobilize a thousand firefighters, have since Tuesday led to the evacuation of 10,000 people.
“I’ve never seen that and it feels like it’s post-apocalyptic, really, it’s falling everywhere, on cars, it’s worrying,” said Thursday Karyn, a resident of Cazaux, just before the order of preventive evacuation of this village near the Dune du Pilat, enveloped by a large plume of smoke and ashes in suspension.
Triggered Thursday afternoon by the passage of a train, another fire ravaged at least 300 hectares near Avignon, in the South-East, before being fixed.
“Vigilant for a few more days”
In Portugal, more than 2,000 firefighters were still mobilized on Friday to fight in particular against four major outbreaks in the north and center of the country.
If the situation has improved somewhat, the authorities have called for the greatest caution. “We must be vigilant for a few more days (…), prevention is better than cure,” Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa insisted on Thursday evening.
According to civil protection, these fires left one dead and around 60 injured.
Since the start of 2022, just over 30,000 hectares have been burned in Portugal, the highest figure on July 15 since 2017, a year marked by deadly fires that killed a hundred people.
In the Spanish region of Extremadura, bordering Portugal and where thousands of hectares have burned since the beginning of the week, another fire “with an unfavorable evolution” broke out on Thursday afternoon and threatened the National Park of Monfragüe, a natural area protected for its biodiversity.
37 degrees at 7am
If the peak of this heat wave seems to have been crossed in Spain, the heat still left no respite for the inhabitants who will have to wait until the beginning of next week to experience slightly milder temperatures.
At 7 a.m. (05 a.m. GMT), it was already 37.2 degrees in the province of Badajoz (southwest) and maximums of 44 degrees were still expected in the country on Friday.
Thursday, it was up to 45.4 degrees in the center. The absolute temperature record in Spain dates from August 2021 (47.4 degrees near Cordoba, in the South).
In Portugal, where the mercury reached 47 degrees in the North on Thursday, a record for a month of July in the country, the maximum should drop to 41 degrees on Friday.
In France, on the contrary, the temperatures, which reached 37/38 degrees in the South-West and the lower Rhone valley on Thursday, should still climb on Friday to 38/40 degrees south of a Bordeaux – Lyon line but will lessen, on the other hand, to the north of it.
From Sunday, the United Kingdom is preparing to experience “extreme” temperatures, according to the Met office, which could beat the record of 38.7 degrees dating from 2019.
The NHS public health service has warned of a ‘jump’ in heat-related hospitalizations while train companies have not ruled out unexpected cancellations due to the temperatures.
In Ireland, the mercury could rise to 32 degrees on Monday, just below the all-time high of 33.3 degrees dating from 1887.
This heat wave is the second in barely a month in Europe. 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.
Posted today at 3:39 p.m.
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