Southern Europe battles wildfires as heatwave spreads towards north

A shepherd watches a fire burning a wheat field between Tabara and Losacio, during the second heatwave of the year, in the province of Zamora, Spain, yesterday. (Reuters)

A heatwave sweeping southern Europe that has caused hundreds of deaths and huge wildfires showed some signs of abating yesterday but continued to move north.Much of Europe is baking in a heatwave that scientists say is consistent with climate change and has pushed temperatures into the mid-40s Celsius (over 110 Fahrenheit) in some regions, with wildfires raging across tinder-dry countryside in Portugal, Spain and France.Temperatures in some parts of southern Europe began to ease over the weekend but thousands of firefighters across the region still battled to contain hundreds of wildfires and authorities said the risk of further blazes remained extremely high.Spain was facing the eighth and last day of a more than week-long heatwave yesterday, which caused more than 510 heat-related deaths, according to estimates from the Carlos III Health Institute.With fires burning thousands of hectares in Galicia, Castille and Leon, Catalonia, Extremadura and Andalusia, Spain mourned the death of one firefighter in the northwestern province of Zamora on Sunday evening. Almost the entire country faces an extreme fire risk.In El Pont de Vilomara in Catalonia, evacuees gathered outside a civic centre, among them retiree Onofre Munoz, 69, who said that his home and van had been completely destroyed.“We bought the van when I retired and now it’s totally scorched. We have nothing,” he said.Our house had quite a few windows, they exploded, and a powerful flame came inside. We knew it yesterday afternoon because we got some pictures in which we saw everything had burned.”More than 70,000 hectares have burnt in Spain so far this year, the worst year of the last decade, according to official data. Last month, a huge wildfire in Sierra de la Culebra, Castille and Leon, ravaged about 30,000 hectares of land.Spain also reported a second death caused by a wildfire after a fireman died on Sunday. A 69-year-old was found dead yesterday in Ferreruela, in an area burned by flames, emergency authorities said. Local media said it was a farmer.In Portugal, temperatures dropped over the weekend, but the risk of wildfires remained very high across most of the country, according to the Portuguese Institute of Meteorology (IPMA).More than 1,000 firefighters, backed by 285 vehicles and 14 aircraft, were battling nine ongoing wildfires, mainly in the country’s northern regions, authorities said.Belgium and Germany were among the countries expecting the heatwave to hit them in coming days.The EU said it was monitoring closely wildfires raging in southern member states yesterday, sending a firefighting plane to Slovenia over the weekend adding to recent deployments to France and Portugal.“We continue of course to monitor the situation during this unprecedented heatwave and will continue to mobilise support as needed,” spokesperson Balazs Ujvari told a briefing.The EU was also providing satellite imagery to France, he added. Separately, the Commission announced in a report that almost half the territory of the bloc was currently at risk of drought.