Up in Flames: Fires Ravage Southern Europe

The sun over Europe continues to beat down mercilessly this summer. With temperatures reaching a record 45 degrees centigrade (113 degrees Fahrenheit) in parts of southern Europe, the combination of intense heat and dryness have led to a severe outbreak of forest fires – some of the worst in years.

In Spain and Portugal where the heat wave and raging fires are the biggest in 20 years, 16 people have died. With no end to the punishing heat and no rain in the near forecast, the flames are threatening to spill over into popular tourist destination sites along the coast.

Throughout southern Europe, local and state governments are struggling to cope with the mounting disaster and have turned to their neighbors and the European Union for help. Portugal has been especially hard hit.

The Lisbon government has called its cabinet to a special crisis session. Late last week it appealed to Brussels for more than 2,000 fire fighters and soldiers who are struggling to put out the rapidly spreading fires.

Portugal up in flames

Interior Minister António Figueiredo Lopes told the Portuguese news agency Lusa that he had requested help under the terms of an EU agreement because neighboring Spain, which is also battling forest fires, was unable to spare support.

"This is one of the worst catastrophe situations in the last 20 years," the minister said.

Several villages had to be evacuated over the weekend as the flames threatened to engulf people’s homes. About a third of Portugal is covered with forest and the latest official figures show some 25,000 hectares (62,000 acres) of woodland, most of it in central Portugal, have been burned so far this year. At least 40 separate fires have been reported.

A general sense of panic and uncertainty hovers over the fire-threatened regions. "The center of the country is up in flames," wrote the newspaper Publico.

Spain's fires under control

In Spain there were also serious fires in many parts of the country; with thousands of hectares of forest destroyed in central and southern Spain. However, the situation isn't as dramatic as in Portugal since firefighters have managed to bring most fires under control. Near Cáceres in the Southwest, more than 500 people had to be rescued from advancing flames. The local government in Extremadura established a crisis management center, in order to coordinate fire fighting.

A number of Spanish cities recorded extremely high temperatures over the weekend. In Madrid, the mercury hit 41.5 degrees centigrade – the highest in ten years. In Seville tourists were being photographed on the streets standing next to thermometers that showed a temperature of 56 degrees centigrade – albeit in the sun.

Aid for France

Last week, France called on its European Union partners for help with devastating forest fires on the Mediterranean coast. The fires had been started by an arsonist, but extreme heat and drought conditions, along with mistral winds, made them difficult to vanquish.

On July 28, France issued an appeal through a EU Commission crisis center that is manned round the clock in case of natural or civil emergencies. The head of the commission's civil protection unit, Pia Bucella, told the AFP news agency that Germany offered to send three Puma helicopters. Belgium, Greece, Italy and Spain had also responded through the crisis center, Bucella said. And water-dropping planes came from non-EU countries Norway, Russia and Canada as well.