Wildfires rage across southern Europe amid record heatwave

Amid a record heatwave, wildfires have scorched more than 19,000 hectares (42,000 acres) of land across France, Spain, Portugal, and Greece, necessitating the evacuation of at least 10,500 people across southern Europe.

Hundreds of firefighters are tackling wildfires in several parts of southern Europe was temperatures are expected to reach 40*C again — shortly after last week’s record heatwave that’s expected to have caused thousands of excess deaths across Europe.

At Perpignan in southwestern France, around 10,500 people were evacuated from their homes as firefighters tackled a wildfire that had scorched 1,650 hectares, according to AFP.

Locals said that flames expanded into a wildfire rapidly.

“The fire came within 300 metres of the houses. We were taken aback by how fast it spread, it was staggering — bordering on panic,” Patrice, a 53-year-old resident of the village of Trevillach, told AFP.

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“We started seeing smoke around 10:30 pm, then it kept coming closer and closer. Someone from the town hall knocked on our door around 1:00 am to tell us to leave,” said Charlotte Pignol, 30, who was evacuated from her home overnight in the area. “There were fire trucks everywhere, and the smell of smoke was overwhelming.”

Elsewhere, in northern Greece, flames set off by a forest fire tore through two factories in Thessaloniki, forcing the evacuation of the surrounding area and to warn households to keep their windows closed. In northeastern Costa Brava coast of Spain, a fire burned more than 2,200 hectares in two days and firefighters said their efforts would be "complicated" by rising temperatures and the many "smoking hotspots" within the fire's perimeter.

In June, more than a dozen countries across Europe broke their temperature records for the month, with old and new highs having a difference of up to 2-3*C. Thousands of excess deaths were attributed to the unprecedented heatwave, with France alone reporting an increase of 29.1 per cent, corresponding to 2,025 additional deaths compared with the previous week, according to The Guardian.