Wildfires raged on Wednesday in Sicily, southwestern France and central Spain, claiming the lives of three firefighters and prompting thousands of evacuations.
Temperatures topped 40C and gusts of hot wind fanned the flames on the southern Italian island, where wildfires have been raging for several days.
Around 6,000 firefighters, forest guards and civil protection officials were deployed to battle the flames with the help of water-bombing aircraft, regional head Renato Schifani said, adding that 50 fires were still burning.
Scientists agree that climate change caused by humans burning fossil fuels is making extreme weather events such as fires and heatwaves more likely and more severe.
Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi said a firefighter died after falling ill while battling the flames.
A spokesperson for the Italian Civil Protection Agency told AFP the situation in Sicily was “serious” and that the fires were “being fuelled by very high temperatures and very dry soil”.
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More than 160 fires have also been recorded in neighbouring Calabria, which the head of local civil protection said were deliberate cases of arson by “malicious individuals” who had, among other things, tied rags soaked in flammable liquid to the tails of stray cats to spread fires.
In France, two firefighters died on Tuesday while tackling a blaze that broke out near Bordeaux airport.
France’s Interior Minister Laurent Nunez met the firefighters’ families on Wednesday, as unions warned workers were facing “exhaustion” and a lack of resources.
Two raging fires displaced thousands of people in the country’s southwest, with one ravaging more than 1,400 hectares (nearly 3,500 acres) in the picturesque Arcachon Basin region near Bordeaux.
“We’re dealing with a very dense stand of closely packed pines,” firefighter Captain Wilfried Schneider told AFP, describing a fire of “rare” intensity.
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Big black cloud
“We saw a big cloud of black smoke spread across the sky in the middle of the afternoon,” said Julie Leonard, a Bordeaux resident in her thirties who came with her family to the affected Le Porge area but was in a spot not under threat.
“If I’d been brave, I would have stayed in my cabin, but it was too hot. I got in my car and left,” said Bernard Roche, 75, who has lived in the area for 35 years.
“In the forest, it’s been particularly dry these last few days,” the former lifeguard said.
Le Porge mayor Martial Zaninetti said the fire could have been started by a machine used to clear forest tracks, but this has yet to be officially confirmed.
Around 700 people left their homes as a precaution in Le Porge, where more than 3,000 campers were also relocated, the prefecture said.
A blaze that raced through wooded hills in another part of southern France, forcing hundreds from their homes and devouring an area twice the size of London’s Heathrow Airport, was being contained earlier on Wednesday, officials said.
The fire erupted on Tuesday in the Var region and spread at an unexpectedly fast pace, forcing around 400 people to evacuate and devouring 2,550 hectares.
Fontainebleau forest could take decades to recover after wildfire, expert says
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Nearly 1,000 firefighters and specialised water aircraft battled to contain the blaze in the region along France’s Mediterranean coast between Marseille and Nice.
In total, 4,600 people have been evacuated and Gironde Prefect Sophie Brocas has called for hundreds more to leave.
In Spain, authorities ordered the evacuation of several districts on Wednesday around the city of Toledo, south of Madrid, after a major wildfire threatened homes.
Emergency alerts were sent by telephone to residents of the districts because of the fire, and several major roads were cut off, the Civil Guard said.
Emergency services said that “due to the progression” of the fire, three villages had been ordered evacuated and people in a fourth had been told to remain in their homes with doors and windows closed “until further notice”.
Toledo is 75 kilometres (45 miles) from the capital.
The new blaze spread as hundreds of firefighters battled a major wildfire that has devastated 32,000 hectares about 100 kilometres north of Madrid.
In 2025, more than 393,000 hectares were consumed by flames in Spain, according to the European Forest Fire Information System, the worst toll in the country’s recent history.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)
