Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Europe broils, burns in heat wave
Britain braces for record highs; Spain, France suffer fires
LONDON — Trains slowed to a crawl. Schools and doctors’ offices shut their doors. The British Museum closed off its upper galleries, then the entire museum. The government urged people to work from home.
The heat wave broiling England spilled northward from the European continent Monday where it has been fueling ferocious wildfires in Spain and France, which evacuated thousands of people and scrambled water-bombing planes and firefighters to battle flames in tinder-dry forests.
Two people were killed in the blazes in Spain that its prime minister linked to global warming, saying, “Climate change kills.”
That toll comes on top of the hundreds of heat-related deaths reported in the Iberian Peninsula, as high temperatures have gripped the continent in recent days and triggered wildfires from Portugal to the Balkans.
Some areas, including northern Italy, are also experiencing extended droughts. Climate change makes such life-threatening extremes less of a rarity, and heat waves have come to places like Britain, which braced for possible record-breaking temperatures.
Much of Britain took an involuntary siesta Monday as merciless heat scorched the country, driving
temperatures close to triple digits Fahrenheit.
By midafternoon, Wales had provisionally recorded the hottest day in its history, with the thermometer in Hawarden hitting 98.8 degrees Fahrenheit. The record for England of 101.7 degrees Fahrenheit was set in 2019, according to the Met Office, Britain’s national weather service.
At 3 p.m., the mercury in Kew Gardens in London hovered just under 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
For Americans in states that regularly sizzle, those numbers might seem underwhelming, but this is happening in a country unprepared for such extremes, and is
known for frequent showers, temperate weather and few homes with air conditioning.
Some train services were canceled, while others were running at reduced speeds out of fear that the heat could cause tracks to buckle. Britain’s Air Force said it had halted flights into and out of its largest base as a “preventative measure,” and flights into and out of London’s Luton Airport were disrupted after the temperatures caused a “surface defect” on the runway.
The country is under a widespread “red” warning for heat issued by the government for the first time in history. Officials urged people to use public transportation
only if necessary and to work from home Monday and Tuesday — a plea reminiscent of the depths of the coronavirus pandemic.
Hospitals and nursing homes were a major cause of concern, officials said, with many older and other vulnerable patients in buildings without air conditioning. Officials urged schools, in their final week of classes before a break, not to close because it would leave children unsupervised in the heat — a directive that some education districts were ignoring.
At least four people were reported to have drowned across the U.K. in rivers, lakes and reservoirs while trying to
cool off.
In France, heat records were broken and swirling hot winds complicated firefighting in the country’s southwest.
“The fire is literally exploding,” said Marc Vermeulen, the regional fire service chief who described tree trunks shattering as flames consumed them, sending burning embers into the air and further spreading the blazes.
“We’re facing extreme and exceptional circumstances,” he said.
Authorities evacuated more towns, moving another 14,900 people from areas that could find themselves in the path of the fires and smoke. In all, more than 31,000 people have been forced from their homes and summer vacation spots in the Gironde region since the wildfires began July 12.
Three additional planes were sent to join six others fighting the fires, scooping up seawater and making repeated runs through dense clouds of smoke, the Interior Ministry said Sunday night.
Spain reported a second fatality in two days in its own blazes. The body of a 69-yearold sheep farmer was found Monday in the same hilly area where a 62-year-old firefighter died a day earlier when he was trapped by flames in the Zamora province. More than 30 forest fires around Spain have forced the evacuation of thousands of people and blackened 85 square miles of forest and scrub.
Passengers on a train through Zamora got a frightening, close look at a blaze, when their train halted in the countryside. Video of the unscheduled and unnerving stop showed about a dozen passengers in a railcar becoming alarmed as they looked out of the windows at the flames encroaching on both sides of the track.
Climate scientists say heat waves are more intense, more frequent and longer because of climate change and coupled with droughts have made wildfires harder to fight. They say climate change will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive.