Wildfires rage in France and Spain as heatwaves sweep Europe

Wildfires raged in southwestern France and Spain on Saturday, forcing thousands of people to be evacuated from their homes as blistering summer temperatures put authorities on alert in parts of Europe.

More than 12,200 people had been evacuated from France's Gironde region by Saturday morning as more than 1,000 firefighters battled to bring the flames under control, regional authorities said in a statement.

“We have a fire that will continue to spread as long as it is not stabilised,” Vincent Ferrier, deputy prefect for Langon in Gironde, told a news conference.

Wildfires have torn through France in recent weeks, as well as in other European countries including Portugal and Spain, and nearly 10,000 hectares (25,000 acres) of land was on fire in the Gironde region on Saturday, up from 7,300 hectares on Friday.

In neighbouring Spain, firefighters were battling a series of blazes on Saturday after days of unusually high temperatures which reached up to 45.7 degrees.

The nearly week-long heatwave has caused 360 heat-related deaths, according to figures from the Carlos III Health Institute.

More than 3,000 people have now been evacuated from homes due to a large wildfire near Mijas, a town in the province of Malaga that is popular with northern European tourists, the region's emergency services said in a tweet early on Saturday.

Many were taken to shelter in a provincial sports centre.

“The police drove up and down the road with their sirens on and everyone was told to leave. Just leave. No instructions where to go,” said British pensioner John Pretty (83).

“It’s frightening . . . because you don’t know what’s happening,” said Belgian resident Jean-Marie Vandelanotte, 68.

[ Hottest weather now set to extend into Tuesday ]

Elsewhere in Spain, fires burned in parts of the Extremadura region, close to the Portuguese border, where members of Spain’s Military Emergency Unit were deployed to help tackle the flames, and in the central Castile and León region.

There was some respite for firefighters in Portugal, where temperatures dropped across most of the country on Saturday after reaching about 40 degrees in recent days.

A total of 39,550 hectares was ravaged by wildfires from the start of the year until mid-June, more than triple the area razed by fires in the same period last year, data from the Institute for the Conservation of Nature and Forests showed.

An area equivalent to almost two-thirds of that has burned during fires in the last week.

Portugal’s health ministry said 238 people had died as a result of the heatwave between July 7th and 13th, most of them elderly people with underlying conditions.

In Britain, the national weather forecaster has issued its first red “extreme heat” warning for parts of England on Monday and Tuesday.

With possibly record-breaking temperatures expected, the government's emergency response committee was due to meet later on Saturday.

The highest recorded temperature in Britain was 38.7 degrees, recorded in Cambridge on July 25th, 2019.

In North Africa, Moroccan firefighters, soldiers, police officers and civil defence workers have been battling at least four fires that are ripping through forests in the north of the country.

At least 1,000 hectares of forest have been burned since Wednesday night in Larache and Ouezzane, according to initial reports.

The country, which is struggling under intense droughts, has in recent days been hit by soaring temperatures approaching 45 degrees.

Extreme heat has also engulfed much of China this week, affecting more than 900 million people. The impacts of the high temperatures have made national headlines, with authorities warning senior citizens of the danger of such conditions.

On Thursday, Shanghai, the country’s most populous city, issued its highest alert for the third time this summer, as high temperatures repeatedly broke records. — Reuters