- The WMO issues a warning on air quality in cities
- The UK declares the first red heat warning for Monday, Tuesday
- Forest fires on fire in France, Spain and Portugal
LEIRIA, Portugal / LONDON, July 15 (Reuters) – Hundreds more people were evacuated from their homes as wildfires hit France, Spain and Portugal on Friday, while European officials issued health warnings for the heat wave in the coming days.
More than 1,000 firefighters, backed by water bomber planes, have been fighting since Tuesday to control two fires in southwestern France that have been fueled by scorching heat, bait conditions and strong winds. .
Although temperatures dropped slightly in Portugal, they were still expected to reach 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) in some places, with five districts on red alert and more than 1,000 firefighters facing 17 forest fires, authorities said .
Register now for FREE and unlimited access to Reuters.com
Sign up
In Spain, a new forest fire broke out in the south of the country after fires in the west last week.
More than 400 people were evacuated from the hills of Mijas, a town popular with tourists from northern Europe in the province of Malaga. Lovers of Torremolinos beach, about 20 km away, could see plumes of smoke rising above the hotels that line the coast.
Meanwhile, the worst drought in more than 70 years has reduced Italy’s longest river, the Po, to just over a drip in some places, and temperatures are expected to rise next week.
Officials are concerned about the effects on people’s health and on health systems that are already being challenged by the COVID-19 pandemic as scorching heat ravages the continent, with warnings issued for the worst, particularly in Britain .
The World Meteorological Organization said the heat wave would worsen air quality, especially in cities.
“The stable, stagnant atmosphere acts as a cover to trap air pollutants, including particles,” WMO scientific officer Lorenzo Labrador told a news conference in Geneva.
“These result in degradation of air quality and adverse health effects, especially for vulnerable people.”
Portuguese Health Minister Marta Temido said on Thursday that the health system was facing a “particularly worrying” week due to the heat wave and said some hospitals were overflowing.
From July 7 to 13, Portugal recorded 238 deaths in excess due to the heat wave, the country’s DGS health authority said. Spain recorded 84 excess deaths attributable to extreme temperatures in the first three days of the heat wave, according to the National Center for Epidemiology database.
Notice from the United Kingdom
A church is depicted during sunset as a heat wave hits Europe, in Oisy-le-Verger, France, on July 14, 2022. REUTERS / Pascal Rossignol
Read more
The British weather station issued its first red “extreme heat” warning for parts of England on Monday and Tuesday. Read more
“Exceptional temperatures, perhaps record-breaking, are likely to be early next week,” Met office chief engineer Paul Gundersen said.
“The nights are also likely to be exceptionally warm, especially in urban areas,” he said. “This is likely to cause widespread impacts on people and infrastructure.”
The highest temperature recorded in Britain was 38.7 C (101.7 F) recorded in Cambridge on July 25, 2019.
Hannah Cloke, a climate expert at the University of Reading in Britain, said the heat wave showed climate change was here and there was an urgent need to adapt.
“We are seeing these problems now and they will get worse. We need to do something now,” he told Reuters.
“It’s harder to deal with that kind of temperature in the UK because we’re just not used to it.”
In Portugal, the highest temperature on Thursday was recorded in the northern town of Pinhao at 47 ºC (116.6 ºF), just below the record.
Raymond Loadwick, 73, a British retiree now living in the Portuguese district of Leiria, had to leave home with his dog Jackson when the flames began burning a hill full of eucalyptus and highly flammable pines on Tuesday.
When he returned a day later, his white house remained intact but the vegetation surrounding it had turned to ashes and its fruit trees were burned. Loadwick fears fires will occur more often in the future: “You have to be on guard,” he told Reuters.
In the French region of Gironde, 11,300 people have been evacuated since the forest fires around Dune du Pilat and Landiras. Some 7,350 hectares (18,000 acres) have been burned. Authorities said the fires had not yet stabilized.
Elsewhere in Spain, forest fires that have burned parts of Extremadura, bordering Portugal, and the central region of Castilla y León, forced the evacuation of four more small villages on Thursday and Friday afternoons.
The flames now threaten a 16th-century monastery and a national park. Several hundred people have been evacuated since the fires started and 7,500 hectares of forest have been destroyed in both regions.
In Catalonia, in the northeast, the authorities suspended camping and sports activities in around 275 villages and towns to avoid fire risks and restrict agricultural work with machinery.
Register now for FREE and unlimited access to Reuters.com
Sign up
Additional reports by Benoit Van Overstraeten in Paris, Emma Pinedo, Elena Rodriguez and Christina Thykjaer in Madrid, Hannah McKay in Torremolinos, William James in London and Emma Farge in Geneva; Written by Alison Williams; Edited by Frances Kerry and Hugh Lawson
Our standards: the principles of trust of Thomson Reuters.