PARIS (AFP) - Spain and France on Wednesday said the risk of more blazes over the coming days was very high, even as a major fire raging in Spain’s central Guadalajara province receded, allowing some ‌residents to return home.
Wildfires have burnt more land in Europe already this year than the annual average in the past two decades, data shows as the world’s fastest-warming continent has endured three stifling, virtually back-to-back heatwaves so far this year.
In France, where two firefighters died on Tuesday as their truck was engulfed in flames in the southwest region of Gironde, authorities urged people to avoid using barbecues in areas hit by heatwaves, stressing that nine out of 10 wildfires start, accidentally or not, as a result of human activity.
Meanwhile, in the Western Balkans, the danger has shifted from heatwaves to hailstorms, with several people injured in North Macedonia and eastern Kosovo.
Scientists say human-driven climate change is increasing the intensity of heatwaves, droughts and wildfires, while also creating conditions for sudden, destructive storms.
The Reuters Climate Monitor, an interactive tool providing real-time data, showed the average high temperature across Western Europe is forecast to be 26.6 degrees Celsius (79.8 degrees Fahrenheit), which is 3 degrees above the normal high for July 22 in the period from 1961 to 1990.
Spain’s worst wildfire so far this year has burned an estimated 32,000 hectares (79,000 acres) in the Guadalajara region. It started to stabilize on Tuesday after forcing evacuations in 34 municipalities and confinement orders in 14 others.
Castilla-La Mancha’s INFOCAM fire service said residents of five villages had been authorized to return, although other restrictions remained in place.
Visiting the region on Wednesday, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said Spain had already suffered 22 major wildfires this year.
“We have already reached 100,000 hectares before reaching the most critical period of the year in the fight against wildfires,” he said. “To put that into perspective, that is the annual average that Spain experienced over the past decade,” he said, adding that more must be done to prevent fires.
Spain’s weather agency AEMET said the danger of wildfires remained “very high or extreme” across most of mainland Spain and the Balearic Islands and was expected to increase further in the coming days.
It urged people to “exercise extreme caution” as the ongoing heatwave combined with dry thunderstorms and Saharan dust.
While temperatures will ease slightly in some areas on Thursday, a dry westerly wind is forecast to drive a fresh surge of heat ‌in Mediterranean regions, where highs of 42 to 44 C could be recorded in some areas.