Man held on suspicion of starting French wildfire
LA TESTE-DE-BUCH, France — Investigators probing the suspected deliberate lighting of what has become a raging wildfire in southwest France detained a man for questioning, as firefighters and water-bombing planes on Tuesday fought ferocious flames there and in other parts of Europe that have baked in extreme heat.
Smoke from a large forest fire fanned by high winds blackened the skyline in Greece’s capital Tuesday. Firefighting aircraft buzzed over the flames and dropped water on the slopes of Mount Penteli, 25 kilometres northeast of the city. Officials ordered hundreds of people to evacuate their homes.
Wildfires also kept emergency crews busy in England, Germany, Portugal and Spain.
In the Gironde region of southwest France, two massive fires feeding on tinder-dry pine forests also have forced tens of thousands of people to flee homes and summer vacation spots since they broke out on July 12.
One of the blazes, tearing through woodlands south of Bordeaux, is suspected to have been started deliberately. A motorist told investigators that before pulling over and trying unsuccessfully to extinguish the flames, he saw a vehicle speeding away from the spot where the fire started, the Bordeaux prosecutor’s office said.
Criminal investigators found evidence pointing to possible arson, the prosecutor’s office said.
The 39-year-old man being questioned Tuesday lives in Gironde and was detained on Monday afternoon, the office said. He also was questioned in 2012 on suspicion of starting a forest fire but that investigation was shelved in 2014 for lack of evidence, the prosecutor’s office added.
Ten water-bombing planes and more than 2,000 firefighters worked day and night to contain that fire and another fierce blaze southwest of Bordeaux that police investigators were treating as accidental.
The blazes have burned through more than 190 square kilometres of forest and vegetation, Gironde authorities said.
Thick clouds of smoke and the risk of flames spreading to buildings have forced more than 39,000 people to evacuate, including 16,000 on Monday, authorities said. A smaller third fire broke out late Monday in the Medoc wine region north of Bordeaux, further taxing regional firefighting resources.
Swirling winds and extreme heat have complicated firefighting. Record-smashing temperatures eased along France’s Atlantic seaboard Tuesday while other parts of the country and the continent continued to broil.
In Paris, the thermometer in the French capital’s oldest weather station — opened in 1873 — topped 40 C for just the third time. The 40.5 C measured there Tuesday by weather service Meteo-France was the monitoring station’s second-highest reading ever, topped only by 42.6 C in July 2019.
The first time the station topped 40 C — hitting 40.4 C — was in July 1947, Meteo France said. After a 72-year gap, the station has now twice surpassed 40 C in the space of just three years.
The people evacuated Monday included 74 residents of a retirement home, authorities said. Another 80 care-home residents were among 2,000 people getting moved out Tuesday from the latest of more than a half-dozen towns and villages that were ordered to evacuate, authorities said.
Approaching flames also forced the emergency evacuation Monday of 363 animals from a zoo in the Arcachon maritime basin, southwest of Bordeaux, the government’s ecological transition ministry said Tuesday.
About 10 animals died of heat and stress, the ministry said.
Five camping sites also went up in flames in that area, which is famous for its oysters and beach resorts, Gironde authorities said.
The double blow of heat waves and droughts exacerbated by climate change are making wildfires more frequent, destructive and harder to fight. In Spain, the prime minister has linked wildfires that have killed two people to global warming, saying Monday that “climate change kills.”
The head of Spain’s Civil Protection and Emergencies agency, Leonardo Marcos González, noted Tuesday that extreme heat and wildfires have hit the country three weeks earlier than usual this year and that many fires broke out at the same time.