By David Latona and Pietro Lombardi
MADRID/PODGORICA (Reuters) -Firefighters across Spain, Portugal, Greece, Turkey and the Balkans were battling wildfires on Tuesday, with another heatwave pushing temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) 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 by Tuesday, regional authorities said.
A man also died in a fire in Albania, while a 61-year-old Hungarian seasonal worker is suspected to have died of heat-related causes while picking fruit in Lleida, in Spain’s eastern Catalonia region.
In Montenegro’s mountainous Kuci area, northeast of the capital Podgorica, one army soldier was killed and another badly injured when a water tanker they were operating overturned, the Defence Ministry said.
In Tarifa, on the southernmost tip of the Iberian peninsula, beachgoers and celebrity chef Jose Andres filmed flames and black smoke on the hills above whitewashed villas.
More than 2,000 people were evacuated from there as the fire – believed to have started in eucalyptus and pine forests – spread, officials said. Helicopters doused the blaze with seawater.
Authorities in Albania, Montenegro, Germany, Spain, Italy and France issued various types of heat warnings.
In Spain, temperatures reached 44 C (111 F) in some regions, according to meteorology service AEMET, with minimal rainfall and windy conditions expected to exacerbate the fire risk.
SPANISH MILITARY HELPS
Spain’s Interior Ministry has put national services on standby, while almost 1,000 members of the armed forces are already supporting firefighting.
The country’s rail operator said trains between northwestern Galicia and Madrid were halted because of a fire.
In Spain’s largest region, Castile and Leon, more than 1,200 firefighters battled 32 wildfires on Tuesday and thousands of residents were told to leave their homes.
Meanwhile, police said it had arrested a firefighter near the walled city of Avila northwest of Madrid, who had confessed to starting a fire two weeks ago because of the potential income from work extinguishing it.
In north Portugal, more than 1,300 firefighters backed by 16 aircraft were battling three large fires. One of them, in the Vila Real area, has been burning for 10 days.
“It’s been 10 days that our population is in panic, without knowing when the fire will knock on their door,” local mayor Favaios told broadcaster RTP, pleading for more government help.
In Albania, swathes of forest and farmland have been burnt by wildfires in the past week, and 30 separate fires continue to burn stoked by strong winds.
The Defence Ministry said four army helicopters and 80 soldiers were helping firefighters. It also reported the death of a man suspected of having started in his backyard a fire that spread across a wider area.
In neighbouring Montenegro, authorities backed by helicopters from Serbia and Croatia contained a wildfire near Podgorica on Tuesday, with the capital covered by smoke. In Gornja Vrbica, residents helped firefighters stop a fire from reaching a local church and cemetery, Pobjeda daily reported.
More help was expected from Austria, Slovenia and Italy under the EU civil protection mechanism.
Dragana Vukovic, whose house in southeastern Piperi was reduced to ruins, told Reuters: “Everything that can be paid for and bought will be compensated, but the memories that burned in these four rooms and the attic cannot be compensated.”
‘OUT OF CONTROL’
In Greece at Europe’s southernmost tip, wildfires in some cases fanned by gale-force winds forced the evacuation of several villages and a hotel on the tourist islands of Zakynthos and Cephalonia in the Ionian Sea along with four other parts of the mainland.
A wildfire in the southern Greek region of Achaia forced residents of five villages near an industrial zone to flee, while 85 firefighters and 10 aircraft tried to stop a fire from reaching houses near the western Greek town of Vonitsa.
The picture was similar in Turkey where a large blaze in the northwestern province of Canakkale burned for a second day, prompting the evacuation of hundreds of residents.
(Reporting by Pietro Lombardi and David Latona in Madrid, Andrei Khalip in Lisbon, Angeliki Koutantou in Athens, Fatos Bytyci in Finiq, Albania, Stevo Vasiljevic in Podgorica; writing by Aislinn Laing, Editing by Andrei Khalip, Andrew Cawthorne and Tomasz Janowski)
