A week of +40C heat – part of a global warming trend widely attributed by scientists to human activity – has caused misery from Portugal to the UK, breaking records and sparking fires that have ravaged tens of thousands of hectares of land. In France and Spain, six times more forest and heather were destroyed by fires this year, and in Portugal three times more, than the 15-year average, the figures show. In Hungary the burned area, although much smaller, is almost 50 times larger than usual. The French president hailed as heroes some of the nearly 2,000 firefighters battling two huge fires in southwestern France that have since last week destroyed more than 20,000 hectares of forest, forcing 37,000 people to evacuate their homes. Visiting the Gironde department, Macron praised the “huge chain of human solidarity that came together to defeat the beast that is these fires” and promised a “great national project” of reconstruction. “Now we will stabilize the fire, go after the victory and rebuild,” Macron told residents and local business owners, including many campsite, hotel and restaurant owners who depend on the summer tourist trade for much of their income. Mediterranean countries were “experiencing the full consequences of climate change”, he said, warning that all “should work to adjust our perceptions of political security” with “more protective rules, a long-term prevention plan”. He said France’s fleet of 22 firefighting aircraft is one of the most modern in Europe, but the country would clearly need more and should be part of a European fleet that could be deployed across the 27-member bloc. Cooler temperatures and a 300-meter-wide blaze helped contain — but not yet extinguish — the Gironde fires, officials said. “Our assessment is generally positive. The situation improved during the night,” a fire brigade spokesman said. Two firefighters were seriously injured during the night. France’s agriculture minister, Marc Fesneau, said the government had already allocated 850 million euros to upgrade its fleet of firefighting planes, as well as 1 billion euros to replant trees, but acknowledged that more should be done. “We need to deal with an extremely exceptional situation, we are talking about more than 20,000 hectares affected in the Gironde, 1,500 in Finistère and 1,500 in the Bouches-du-Rhône,” Fesneau said, referring to the damage caused in Brittany and the south. Fires continued to rage Wednesday in Brittany. A man being questioned on suspicion of intentionally starting one of the Gironde apartment fires was released early Wednesday morning, authorities said, after police ruled him out as a possible arson suspect. More than 60 French communities recorded their hottest temperatures ever on Tuesday, including northern ports such as Dieppe, where the mercury reached 40.4 degrees Celsius, and Boulogne, which recorded 39.6 degrees Celsius, two degrees higher than her previous record. A firefighter tries to put out the flames near Megara, west of Athens. Photo: Petros Giannakouris/AP Elsewhere, Greek firefighters largely gained the upper hand in their battle against a wildfire raging for a second day in mountain suburbs north of Athens that had forced hundreds of people to flee. “For the most part the fire is under control,” a fire service spokesman said. Nearly 500 firefighters, 120 vehicles, nine planes and 10 helicopters were battling the blaze in the suburbs of Penteli, Pallini, Anthousa and Gerakas, home to around 90,000 people. A new fire broke out on Wednesday morning in Megara, west of Athens, and the Greek government asked European countries to send firefighters. A team from Romania helped tackle Tuesday’s mountainside fire. Armando Silva, head of civil protection in Portugal’s northern region, said rising temperatures and strong winds would make it difficult to fight a huge fire that has burned 10,000-12,000 hectares since Sunday around the municipality of Murca. In Spain, where firefighters were battling blazes in five different regions, the national weather service predicted higher temperatures for the end of the week, while in Italy fires continued to burn in several areas, including one that threatened to burn out part of the north-east city of Trieste without electricity and water. Firefighters near the town of Lucca in the central Tuscany region battled a blaze for a third straight day that had destroyed about 560 hectares of forest, authorities said, and forced the evacuation of about 500 people. “Some fronts have strengthened because of the wind,” said regional governor Eugenio Giani. In northeastern Friuli Venezia Giulia, people were told to stay indoors due to thick smoke from the Carso region bordering Croatia and Slovenia. Subscribe to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every day at 7am. BST Fourteen Italian cities, including Rome, Milan and Florence, are to be put on the country’s highest heat alert on Thursday, up from nine on Wednesday, with temperatures expected to reach 40C in the north and center of the country. country. Britain topped 40C for the first time on Tuesday, smashing its previous record by 1.6C. London’s firefighters endured their busiest day since the second world war and on Wednesday engineers raced to fix bent train tracks.
