France and Spain race to contain fires before new heatwave / Photo: © AFP
France and Spain race to contain fires before new heatwave
French and Spanish firefighters on Monday battled to contain raging wildfires that have reduced land and property to ashes and forced hundreds of thousands of residents and tourists to flee for their lives.
But with searing temperatures forecast to rise again, fears grew that days more of punishing heat could further fan the flames, destroying more homes and livelihoods at the peak of the summer holiday season.
Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said the coming hours would be "absolutely decisive" to bring the fires west of the capital, Madrid, under control.
Some 60,000 people have been forced to flee in Spain and 220,000 in France, often with just minutes' notice, some leaving pets and medicine behind.
At a sports hall just outside Madrid, displaced people sprawled on camp beds, held their heads in their hands and comforted pets as they awaited news.
Maria Angeles Canete fought back tears as she looked around the desolation that used to be her campsite near Navaluenga, west of the capital.
"We lost everything," she said. "We had this campsite, we had another one, and we've lost it all. We have nothing."
In Brussels, the European Union announced more water-bombing planes were being sent to France, in addition to those already deployed to Spain.
But EU commissioner Hadja Lahbib told AFP that its fleet was increasingly stretched due to fears they may soon be needed elsewhere.
"Extreme conditions are looming for Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, in addition to France, the Iberian Peninsula... where the situation is expected to worsen, including in Portugal starting today," Lahbib said.
- Devastation -
The scale of the devastation from the fires is vast in the worst-affected areas.
Pine trees smouldered with blackened trunks and smoke rose from charred forests, with the burnt-out husks of cars and houses reduced to shells, AFP reporters said.
"You run to save what you can and then you turn to defend," said Karim Benali, 39, a volunteer firefighter on a road near Navaluenga.
"There were some 48 homes here, they burned," he said, surrounded by charred earth and trees blanketed with a persistent smell of smoke.
In France, fire has ravaged 42,000 hectares (103,000 acres) of forest -- an area larger than the US city of Detroit -- west of Bordeaux since last Wednesday.
In Spain, 77,000 hectares -- nearly the size of New York City -- has been destroyed.
David Sanchez, a 48-year-old painter and decorator, had just returned home to Cebreros after evacuating at the weekend to find that his small olive and pistachio grove had been consumed by the inferno.
"Now it's time to clean up and plant again and that's it. It's crap, to be honest. And the fire has flared up again down there," he said, surrounded by choking air that stung the eyes and throat.
Some 150,000 hectares of land have burned in Spain and 115,000 hectares in France since the start of this year.
Earlier this month, 13 people were killed in a wildfire in southwestern Spain while flames ripped through the UNESCO-listed Fontainebleau forest south of Paris.
"We want to help," said farmer and wood transporter Christopher Bonnefond, 25, in the village of Marcheprime, southwest of the city in the Gironde region.
"I'm a hunter and I want nature to stay like it is."
- Climate change -
Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has called the fires "the most painful expression of a climate emergency", with the flames ripping through land and vegetation left tinder-dry by lack of rainfall and a succession of heatwaves.
France's main fire has caused a "pyrocumulonimbus" -- a giant fire cloud that can create its own winds and packs lightning and sometimes tornadoes that can cause more blazes.
Spain's weather agency AEMET announced a new heatwave starting Wednesday until the end of the week, with temperatures forecast to hit 42C in the northeast and 39C in the centre.
"The wildfire danger level will continue to increase, reaching extreme levels and making firefighting efforts more difficult due to high temperatures, locally gusty southerly winds and widespread low humidity," AEMET said in a statement.
MeteoFrance also forecast more hot weather of up to 40C from Tuesday with dry wind.
"All the conditions are in place for the fire to start up again," said Philippe de Gonneville, mayor of the village of Lege-Cap-Ferret near the Atlantic coast.
burs-phz/rmb
G.Jackson--VC
