Iberian peninsula, Italy and Balkans | Fires rage in Europe

(Madrid) The Iberian Peninsula and the Balkan countries are fighting in the heat wave on Monday against several fires that have already ravaged part of the Spanish tourist site in Las Médulas, listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The heat wave that crosses Europe has led the meteorological institutes of France, Italy and until Albania to trigger red heat wave alerts. In France, Bordeaux (southwest) broke its heat record on Monday, every month, with 41.6 ° C in the thermometer.

These high temperatures which begin “to reach the United Kingdom, is surprisingly powerful compared to historical data. However, more extensive, longer and more frequent heat waves are a predictable consequence of the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, mainly due to our use of fossil fuels, “explains Richard Allan, professor at the British University of Reading.

“The intensity of summer heat waves, but also extreme weather conditions, dry or humid, will continue to get worse until we master our greenhouse gas and stabilization emissions,” he adds, insisting on the need to “prepare for a more dangerous world”.

The Italian Ministry of Health issued a red alert for seven major cities on Monday, including Bologna and Florence, while temperatures should further increase in the coming days. Eleven cities are on a red alert for Tuesday and sixteen for Wednesday.

Some 190 firefighters and the army continue to fight a fire that has been raging since Saturday in the park surrounding Vesuvius, whose access is closed to tourists.

A four -year -old Romanian boy died of a heat stroke, a few days after being found unconscious in the family car in Sardinia.

In Spain, the heat wave that has been hit for a week, with temperatures around 40 ° C, should continue until Sunday, according to the local meteorological agency, and generates multiple fires.

The Castille-et-León region, where Las Médulas is located, former Roman gold mines classified by UNESCO in 1997, recorded 13 fires in just three days, told the Juan Carlos Suárez-Quiñones, environment advisor in this region in the northwest of the country, stressing that many of them are intentional.

Heritage

The winds make “very difficult” the fight against fire which transforms the hundred -year -old trees which cover the Las Médulas site in ashes, and which made four light injured, according to the same source.

“It will take years for (the landscape) to recover,” deplored Alfonso Fernández, mayor of Carucedo, a nearby locality, questioned by the Cadena ser.

Another fire, near the tourist town of Tarifa, in the south of Spain, which was mastered on Friday, resumed more beautiful, forcing to evacuate 2,000 people, some of whom at the hotel or at the beach.

Neighboring Portugal fights on three major fires on Monday. The most worrying is located in Transcoso, in the center, and mobilizes even more than 650 firefighters. He caused six light injuries, including three firefighters, according to an assessment of the civil protection cited by the agency Lusa, which specifies however that the situation evolves favorably.

In France, 20 departments, mainly in the West and the South, are classified in high risk for fires on Monday by Météo-France, the day after the mastery of the gigantic fire which traveled 16,000 hectares in the Aude.

In Türkiye, more than 2,000 people had to be evacuated Monday in the province of çanakkale (northwest), where a violent fire devastated dwellings and intoxicated dozens of residents.

The Balkans overheating

The heat wave alert is also in force in several regions of the Western Balkans, with 41 ° C reached in places, in the south of Bosnia, in Montenegro and Albania.

In Albania, around 800 soldiers were deployed to help the firefighters, 14 homes being still active on Monday, the Ministry of Defense announced.

They are assisted by seven helicopters and emirati, Czech, Slovak, Croatian and Greek water bombers, he specifies.

In this country, nearly 34,000 hectares have been burned since July in almost daily vegetation fires, according to the European Information System on Forest Fire (Effis).

The police evacuated tourists on Monday, 500 according to local media, from the protected natural area Syri I Kaltër (blue eye), a source of water very popular with tourists, about twenty kilometers near Saranda, a seaside resort in the south of the country.

In the neighboring Montenegro, the army also intervened to support firefighters on an important fire fueled by gusts of wind which declared itself on Monday north of Podgorica, the capital, where several families had to leave their house, RTCG national television reported.

In Croatia, a forest fire ravaged around 300 hectares in the Jesenice region, near the port of Split, in the south.