Next 12 hours ‘decisive’ for wildfire near Madrid, says Spanish PM
Repeated heatwaves and strong winds alarm experts, who warn blazes are becoming harder to quell Two firefighters have died while tackling a wildfire in Crete, the Greek fire department has said, as extreme heat hinders efforts to control blazes ravaging southern Europe . The arc of brutal fires, which runs from the Atlantic coast to the eastern Mediterranean, and from the Scottish Highlands to the south of Spain , has alarmed experts because many of the fires have been out of control and burning close to towns and cities. Temperatures exacerbated by the climate crisis reached 38C on Wednesday in Bordeaux in France, where firefighters kept a huge blaze in nearby pine forests from reaching the suburbs, and 37C in Madrid, west of which Spain’s largest wildfire on record had been “technically stabilised”, according to the interior minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska.
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The prefecture of Gironde said 126 firefighters had been injured since the start of the fire but the total burned area remained stable at 42,000 hectares (104,000 acres) on Wednesday morning. New fires also prompted evacuations in Greece – where authorities said the two dead firefighters “fell heroically in the line of duty” while trying to extinguish the fire in Crete – and Turkey.
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Repeated heatwaves and strong winds alarm experts, who warn blazes are becoming harder to quell Two firefighters have died while tackling a wildfire in Crete, the Greek fire department has said, as extreme heat hinders efforts to control blazes ravaging southern Europe . The arc of brutal fires, which runs from the Atlantic coast to the eastern Mediterranean, and from the Scottish Highlands to the south of Spain , has alarmed experts because many of the fires have been out of control and burning close to towns and cities. Temperatures exacerbated by the climate crisis reached 38C on Wednesday in Bordeaux in France, where firefighters kept a huge blaze in nearby pine forests from reaching the suburbs, and 37C in Madrid, west of which Spain’s largest wildfire on record had been “technically stabilised”, according to the interior minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska.
