Europe Battles Multiple Wildfires Amid Record-Breaking Heat

PARIS: Firefighters across Europe struggled against multiple fires Friday as a new wave of record-breaking heat baked a swath of the continent, their task further complicated by exceptionally parched landscapes. With France experiencing its driest year ever, a new fire raced through woodlands overnight in the Landes region on the southwest coast. The blaze forced more than 500 people to evacuate their homes in the town of Luglon as hundreds of firefighters deployed to the area, the regional administration said Friday. It’s one of several fires scorching forests around France this week, including in normally cooler and wetter regions in the north and Brittany. A historic fire devoured forests near Bordeaux last month and pushed a quarter of a million people from their homes. After the U.K. recorded its hottest day of the year on Thursday, firefighters spent Friday tackling fires across the West Midlands, in central England, that led to thousands of emergency calls and forced people to flee from burning homes. Nineteen people were hospitalized, the ambulance service said. The historic temperatures are linked to human-caused climate change, and are hitting countries more designed for long cold seasons and ill-equipped for this sort of heat, with limited air conditioning. Meanwhile, efforts to contain a wildfire in Germany were complicated by unexploded World War II munitions, and shifting winds in Croatia spread flames deeper into a coastal suburb and forced more than 1,000 people to flee. In the town of Stourbridge, where a huge blaze started Thursday, TV footage showed the fires consuming houses, with many left without roofs as flames burned inside the charred walls. About 20 to 30 homes were completely destroyed, Stourbridge lawmaker Cat Eccles told the BBC. A woman who was evacuated from her home in Stourbridge said police knocked on her door and urged her to leave immediately. “They thought the fire was changing directions, and they didn’t know which direction it was going in,” Jane Baxter told BBC Radio. “So, it was literally ‘grab what you need and get out.’” “We could see the flames from our bedroom window,” she added. “It was spreading so fast and going in quite a few different directions across the fields.” Simon Tuhill, chief fire officer of West Midlands Fire Service, said an investigation will be launched but the fire was believed to have started in the grassland before spreading to homes nearby. Some 1,017 wildfires have been recorded in England and Wales this year, according to data from the National Fire Chiefs Council. The Met Office, the official weather agency, said 38.1C (100.6 F) was recorded in west London on Thursday, marking the hottest day of the year. While temperatures cooled slightly on Friday, many parts of the country have seen little to no rain for weeks. This July has been the driest in England and Wales since records began in 1836, fueling drought and wildfires. All 1,800 residents of the village of Gey in Germany’s North Rhine-Westphalia state were evacuated after a wildfire in the nearby Hürtgen forest threatened to reach their homes. Nearly 300 hectares (1.16 square miles) of forest were ablaze on Friday morning, local authorities said. Unexploded ordnance from World War II in the forest hampered firefighting efforts, German news agency dpa reported. Explosions could be heard as the munitions detonated during the fire, forcing firefighters to stay out of the area for safety. The fire advanced to within 300 meters (1,000 feet) of Gey, which sits on the edge of the forest near the Belgian border. Overnight a shift in wind direction raised the risk that the flames could reach Gey by morning, prompting officials to order the initial evacuation. The cause of the blaze remains unknown.