RAGING INFERNOS IN CANADA, EUROPE
40,000 evacuated from British Columbia; wildfires in France, Italy and Adriatic coast
ALMOST 40,000 Canadians have fled their homes under threat of huge wild fires, with British Columbia facing its largest emergency evacuation ever, officials said on Monday.
Canada scrambled thousands of firefighters and hundreds of aircraft to tackle raging infernos in the western province, and had even drafted extra firefighters from Australia, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said.
He said 39,000 people had been forced from their homes, noting that the emergency measures constituted “the largest evacuation in the history of British Columbia”, the worst-hit region.
“We’re expecting 50 forest firefighters to come in from Australia soon. And if there are additional resources needed from other parts of the world, we will access those as well,” he said.
Southern and central British Columbia have been hit by scorching weather that has left the forested province on high alert for the past 10 days.
Authorities hoped to have the fires under control last week, but the fires returned over the weekend, fanned by strong winds and increasing in number as lightning strikes sparked new blazes.
Around 50 alerts were issued in towns and villages in British Columbia, forcing residents to flee their homes, with no guarantee they could return any time soon.
In Zagreb, firefighters battled to douse wildfires on the Adriatic coast of Croatia and Montenegro yesterday, as blazes also raged in Italy, France and Portugal.
About a dozen wildfires had broken out on Sunday in the villages surrounding Split, a popular tourist destination, but firefighters managed to control the blaze on the outskirts of Croatia’s second largest city. Late Monday, the fire spread to the suburbs of Split, where a shopping centre had to be evacuated.
According to initial estimates some 4,500ha of land, mostly pine forests, bushes and olive groves, were destroyed. Houses were burned but there were no casualties.
In neighbouring Montenegro, where the forest fires forced the evacuation of more than a hundred campers on the Lustica peninsula, the situation was slightly better. Fires however were still active in several municipalities further inland but were all under control.
The cause of the fires in the two countries at the height of the summer tourist season is still not known.
In Italy, authorities said a blaze in a pine forest at a popular park outside Rome, now under control, was deliberately set and that a suspect has been arrested.
But fires continue burn in southern Italy in parts of the Calabria region and in the outskirts of Naples, where one person died on Monday after falling off his roof where he went to look at how the forest fire was progressing.
Winds, high temperatures and dry conditions prompted fires to break out the past several days in southern France and the Mediterranean island of Corsica. AFP