Firemen across Spain, Portugal, Greece, Türkiye and the Balkans were battling wildfires yesterday with another heatwave pushing temperatures over 40C across parts of Europe.
Global warming is giving the Mediterranean region hotter, drier summers, scientists say, with wildfires surging each year and sometimes whipping up into “whirls”.
“We are being cooked alive, this cannot continue,” said a mayor in Portugal, Alexandre Favaios, as three fires burned.
On the outskirts of the Spanish capital Madrid, a fire killed a man working at a horse stable and reached some houses and farms but was contained yesterday, regional authorities said.
England has entered its fourth heatwave of the summer, with a number of places seeing temperatures higher than 30C yesterday.
Areas in South West England, the South West Midlands, North West England and East Anglia met heatwave criteria, by having three consecutive days above a certain temperature.
In Albania and Montenegro, authorities issued a heatwave warning as temperatures reached 39C.
Germany issued heat warnings for much of the country, with temperatures above 30C expected until Friday.
In Italy, red heat alerts were issued for 16 cities while in France, authorities declared red or orange weather alerts for much of the country.
In Spain, temperatures were set to reach 44C in some regions, according to meteorology service AEMET.
- Authorities in Taiwan were scrambling yesterday to evacuate hundreds from the likely path of Typhoon Podul, expected to make landfall on the island’s southeastern coast, while nearby areas battle to recover from the havoc caused by previous storms.
The mid-strength Typhoon Podul, packing gusts of as much as 155kph, was heading for the southeastern city of Taitung as it intensifies and was expected to make landfall nearby today, weather officials said.
In the eastern county of Hualien, nearly 700 people will be evacuated from their homes to guard against the risk of overflow from a natural dam formed after a landslide set off by a previous typhoon.
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