A prolonged spell of hot, dry weather is fuelling wildfires in France and Greece while worsening drought conditions in the United Kingdom, highlighting the growing impact of extreme summer weather across Europe.
ATHENS, Greece — A record-breaking hot and dry summer tightened its grip on Europe Monday, as water-dropping planes swooped over a major wildfire in Greece, firefighters in France sought to stabilize a blaze in Provence, and much of the U.K. recorded its driest July in nearly two centuries.
Wildfires west of Athens jumped containment lines, a day after a midair collision between two helicopters killed two crew members.
A Greek and a Danish national died and two others were hospitalized in the helicopter collision. All four were private operators chartered by the Greek firefighting service.
In France, firefighters in the region around Bordeaux guarded against potential flare-ups inside a still-burning scar four times the size of Paris.
A prolonged heat wave and lack of rainfall led to the driest July in England and Wales in nearly 200 years of recordkeeping, according to provisional statistics, the U.K.’s weather service said Monday.
All of Wales and more than half of England are officially in drought, the Met Office said. The dry spell was accompanied by sweltering temperatures across much of the U.K., following heat waves in May and June.
Wales tied its record for its warmest mean temperature for July while England and the U.K. recorded their second-warmest July.
Athens area remains at high risk with hundreds evacuated
Strong winds returned to southern Greece late Monday, pushing flames into mountain home clusters, destroying farms and property, and closing a highway.
Areas surrounding Athens remain at high risk through the week with temperatures set to rise further. More than 1,000 people have been evacuated from around the seaside resort of Porto Germeno and other areas west of the capital – including more than 250 rescued by boats from beaches in the area.
“This is a difficult fire that has troubled us,” Fire Service spokesman Yiannis Artopios said, adding that 12 water-dropping planes and 11 helicopters were operating in the area Monday.
The blaze was blamed on a faulty power line from a wind farm and led to the arrests of two contractors on charges of negligent arson.
Despite improved detection methods and expanded cooperation among European Union members, Greece and other countries along Europe’s Mediterranean coast suffer devastating wildfires every summer as spells of heat wave temperatures grow longer.
Europe is Earth’s fastest-warming continent, heating at more than twice the global average since the 1980s, according to the European Union’s Copernicus climate service. Rising temperatures and prolonged drought leave vegetation drier and more combustible, allowing fires to spread faster and burn more intensely.
