Around one hundred firefighters mobilized against a fire in eastern England, the forests catching fire all the more easily as vegetation and soils are very dry, a drought intensified by the exceptional heatwaves of June and July.
Here are the latest developments on Thursday on the wildfire front in Europe :
– Spain: end of the national emergency
The fire in the Madrid region has “almost no flames left,” and Spanish authorities have raised the national emergency, a sign of the improvement of the situation in the face of fires of unprecedented scale, even though other outbreaks continue to flare up elsewhere in the country.
A thousand people remain evacuated. Tens of thousands of others have been able to return home since Tuesday evening due to the improvement of the situation.
The Madrid regional prefecture, however, warned of the risk of fire being “very high, even extreme” amid the heatwave.
– Greece: 300 firefighters facing fires in Crete, 8,000 evacuated
More than 300 firefighters were fighting on Thursday against two wildfires on the Greek island of Crete, which forced about 8,000 people to evacuate, according to authorities.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis warned that Greece, which had been relatively spared at the start of the summer from heatwaves and major fires like in France and Spain, would experience “difficult days” ahead.
– France: lull in the southwest
A “milestone” was crossed Thursday in southwestern France, aided by more favorable weather and a “reasonable optimism” now prevailing among the firefighters who have been waging for more than a week a fierce battle against the mega-fire in Gironde, still stabilized at around 42,000 hectares of ravaged forest.
“We have just crossed a new threshold, a turning point of sorts, since at the moment we speak, there are only three hot spots across the entire Saumos sector,” said Marc Vermeulen, head of the firefighters in the department, at midday.
After eight days of fighting the most serious fire in France since 1949, the blaze is “stabilized.”
– Portugal: nearly 800 firefighters mobilized against a fire in the north
Nearly 800 firefighters were mobilized Thursday morning to fight a vegetation fire that had been raging since Tuesday in the north of Portugal, according to the latest tally from civil protection.
“The perimeter of the fire is under control at about 80%,” but the fire remained “active” by late morning, said a spokesperson for the National Civil Protection Authority.
– Turkey: 115 fires recorded
Rescuers have dealt with 115 fires since Wednesday in Turkey, “of which 110 have been completely brought under control,” said on Thursday the Minister of Agriculture Ibrahim Yumakli.
According to the minister, who spoke live Thursday from the coordination center for firefighting in Ankara, 69 of these incidents occurred “outside forests.”
– England: About a hundred firefighters mobilized against a fire in the east
Firefighters battled Thursday “in difficult conditions” a fire in Suffolk, in eastern England, which razed about a hundred hectares and forced some residents and holidaymakers to evacuate.
The fire, which is spreading in a coastal area with a landscape mainly consisting of heath, south of the town of Dunwich, broke out on Wednesday late afternoon and was declared a “major incident” by authorities.
