The widespread heatwave that sparked those blazes spread as far as Scotland on Tuesday, bringing scorching temperatures to towns and cities across Britain and leaving Londoners shocked to see their city hit by the same kind of fires they’re used to. watching the news.
The charred ground and gutted houses in the British capital were testament to the fact that even the stereotypically wet and dreary UK, where umbrellas and overcoats are more common than air conditioners, cannot escape the effects of a rapidly warming climate.
Houses destroyed in a major fire in Wennington, Greater London, England, are seen on July 20, 2022. Fires broke out across London amid record-breaking heat the previous day. Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg/Getty
Rare fires burned and raged across London on Tuesday as much of England suffered heatwaves of more than 100 degrees. A new temperature record was set in the town of Coningsby, in eastern England, at 40.3 degrees Celsius, i.e. over 104 degrees Fahrenheit.
With much of the country having gone a month or more with barely a drop of rain, hot temperatures were all it took to ignite dry grass and brush in backyards and highways.
London’s Fire Service worked its busiest day since World War II, with firefighters responding to more than 2,600 calls and tackling 12 fires at one point, according to Mayor Sadiq Khan.
At least 41 properties were destroyed by the fires in London, the mayor said, and 16 firefighters were treated for smoke inhalation or other injuries.
Fires across London on UK’s hottest day at 02.23am
Dee Ncube and her family fled their burning neighborhood in the capital, leaving everything behind. He told Inocencio the only time he had seen anything like this in movies or on television.
“We have nothing, everything is gone,” Timothy Stock, whose home was among those lost in the flames in the Greater London village of Wennington, told CBS News affiliate BBC News.
Cabinet minister Keith Malthouse told other members of the British parliament on Wednesday that 13 people had died amid the heatwave after “running into difficulties in rivers, reservoirs and lakes while swimming in recent days – seven of them teenagers”.
But while many Londoners were shocked by the extreme heat, people who study the Earth’s changing climate were not.
Biden to boost wind industry as climate plan stalls at 02:02
“This is it, right? This is the climate change that scientists have been promising us,” Dr. Michal Nahmani, a climate policy expert at the London School of Economics, told CBS News. “This level of extreme weather is life-threatening and we really want to make sure people are under no illusion that this is serious, and this is here to stay.”
Climate campaigners were also keen to highlight Tuesday’s extremes as a warning of impending danger and a call to action.
Protesters from a protest group called “Just Stop Oil” scaled a metal sign frame above the M25, one of Britain’s busiest motorways, which rings London, causing heavy traffic on Wednesday morning.
All time temperature records are being broken, thousands of people are expected to die of heatstroke and the @UKParliament is too busy fighting each other to care.
DON’T BE AN INTERRUPTER! Jump into action. WE MUST ACT FAST. WE HAVE TO #JUST STOP. pic.twitter.com/qn2RDa1btd
— JustStopOil (@JustStop_Oil) July 20, 2022
The group said it was sorry for the disruption to morning commuters, but declared the M25 a “site of political resistance” and warned there would be more protests in the coming days.
“This is the moment when climate inertia is truly revealed in all its murderous glory for all to see: as an elite-led project of death that will extinguish all life if we let it,” the group said in a statement. announcing its action and demanding that the UK government stop investing in fossil fuel mining.
Other countries further south were still battling large blazes Wednesday that broke out last week. Thousands have died and tens of thousands have been evacuated.
Hot summer temperatures and wildfires are roasting Europe at 03:30
Firefighters in southwestern France were still battling the twin blazes that covered an area twice the size of Paris for a ninth straight day on Wednesday, but weather conditions improved overnight there as well, and officials said they were getting it under control.
“Our assessment is generally positive. The situation improved overnight,” local fire department spokesman Arnaud Mendousse told reporters, according to the Associated Press. President Emmanuel Macron was due to visit the hard-hit Gironde region on Wednesday, where fires have forced some 37,000 people from their homes.
Spain and Portugal continue to record new deaths from extreme heat and fires, with the toll exceeding 1,000.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Wednesday that “more than 500 people have died because of such high temperatures” in the last week in his country, citing a statistical analysis by a public health institute.
“I ask citizens to be very careful,” Sanchez said, adding that “extreme climate change is a reality.”
A fire burns near a house in Drafi, Athens, Greece, July 19, 2022. KOSTAS BALTAS/REUTERS
Further west, police in Greece ran from door to door, shouting for residents to flee north of Athens as a fire approached.
Evacuations also continued in Italy, where fires were still growing and temperatures had yet to begin to cool.
While the worst of the heat wave appeared to be over for much of Western Europe, with temperatures dropping dramatically overnight from northern Britain to southern France, climate experts and campaigners were desperate to understand that while this week was An exception, those exceptions are expected to become more common — and even hotter.
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