Firefighters in Spain, Portugal and Greece are battling fierce wildfires as scorching, dry, intense heat fuels blazes across the region, coinciding with major religious holidays, as global warming leaves its mark on Europe.
Spain faced 14 major fires on Friday, said Virginia Barcones, the emergency services chief, as temperatures were forecast to rise further over the weekend.
“Today will once again be a very tough day with an extreme risk of new fires,” Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez warned on Friday.
The State Meteorological Agency placed most of the country under extreme fire danger alerts, particularly in the north and west, where the largest blazes raged. The current heatwave, with temperatures topping 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) on several days this month, is expected to linger until Monday.
In Galicia, fires shut down several highways and halted high-speed rail services to Madrid. The EU’s European Forest Fire Information System reported that wildfires in Spain this year have already burned 158,000 hectares (390,000 acres), an area the size of metropolitan London.
Friday marked the Feast of the Assumption in Spain and Portugal, a major Catholic holiday usually observed with family gatherings and processions.
The fires raging across Portugal caused a first fatality Friday, when the former mayor of the eastern town of Planta died fighting fires there, President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa announced.
The president offered “heartfelt condolences to the mayor of Guarda for the death of former mayor Carlos Damaso, victim of a fire he was fighting in his parish, asking that he pass them on to his family”, the president’s statement said.
Almost 4,000 firefighters battled seven active fires in Portugal, as authorities extended a state of alert until Sunday. The government also sought European Union assistance under its civil protection mechanism.
A day earlier, Spain received two Canadair water bomber aircraft from the European Union, the first time it had ever activated the bloc’s emergency firefighting aid.
Elsewhere in Southern Europe, Greece continued to struggle with a major wildfire burning for four days on the island of Chios. Several overnight evacuations took place as flames spread through the island’s northern region. Two planes and two helicopters dropped water during calmer winds early on Friday.
After devastating fires earlier this week in western Greece, the fire service remained on high alert outside Athens and in southern areas, where strong winds and high temperatures heightened the danger.
Across the Balkans and Southern Europe, demand for the EU’s shared firefighting resources has soared this year. Bulgaria, Montenegro and Albania have all called for help in recent days as the system has already been deployed as often as during the whole of last year’s fire season.
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual head of the world’s Orthodox Christians, expressed solidarity with wildfire victims during prayers for the Dormition of the Virgin Mary, one of the faith’s most significant feast days.
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