{"id":65975,"date":"2026-08-17T00:36:58","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T00:36:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/65975\/"},"modified":"2026-08-17T00:36:58","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T00:36:58","slug":"nearly-500-arrested-over-suspected-arson-in-france-as-wildfires-grip-europe-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/65975\/","title":{"rendered":"Nearly 500 arrested over suspected arson in France as wildfires grip Europe \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Almost 500 people have been arrested on suspicion of starting wildfires in France<\/a> since the start of the summer, authorities have said, as firefighters in half a dozen European countries tackle ferocious blazes amid a record-breaking heatwave.<\/p>\n

A fire engulfed \u2060homes in a Croatian<\/a> holiday resort on Friday, killing one person, injuring 40 and forcing 1,200 to evacuate, officials said, as the EU warned that pockets of \u201cvery extreme\u201d wildfire conditions stretched across the continent.<\/p>\n

Hundreds more people were evacuated from villages in western Germany<\/a> and southwest France, while stranded holidaymakers were picked up from beaches threatened by flames in Greece<\/a>, and the army rescued historic relics in Spain<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Residents in Belgium\u2019s<\/a> Li\u00e8ge province were also asked to evacuate their homes on Saturday afternoon, as the biggest fire on the country\u2019s record burned through the High Fens, Belgium\u2019s largest nature reserve. <\/p>\n

With three in five Europeans experiencing temperatures of at least 30 degrees on Friday and about 150 million enduring 35 degrees or more, France\u2019s interior ministry said 474 people, including 183 minors, had been detained over wildfires in the country since July 1st.<\/p>\n

About 70 per cent of those arrested were suspected of deliberately starting fires and the rest of doing so accidentally. French media said a 15-year-old boy had been detained in connection with a fire near Bordeaux airport that killed two firefighters in July.<\/p>\n

French authorities on Friday evacuated more than 525 people from the village of Luglon in the south-west region of Landes after a new wildfire tore through almost 1,100 hectares of tinder-dry pine forest in less than 24 hours.<\/p>\n

\"AA fire rages in the High Fens nature reserve in Belgium on Friday night. Photograph: Natacha Freisen\/Belga Mag\/AFP via Getty Images <\/p>\n

\u201cThe situation is unfavourable and the fire remains raging,\u201d Gilles Clavreul, a regional official, told reporters, \u200badding that 500 firefighters were tackling \u200cthe flames and six water-dumping aircraft \u200chad been sent to assist. Roads to the village were closed.<\/p>\n

Luglon is about 100km southeast of the popular holiday destinations of Arcachon Bay and the L\u00e8ge-Cap-Ferret peninsula where two huge wildfires destroyed more than 50,000 hectares in late July, forcing the evacuation of as many as 220,000 people.<\/p>\n

Scientists say climate breakdown is causing more frequent and more extreme weather events, evaporating soils and waterways, fuelling wildfires and leading to thousands of excess deaths in France. Europe is heating at about twice the global average rate.<\/p>\n

The EU\u2019s Copernicus climate change service warned in its weekly outlook of \u201cvery extreme\u201d conditions across a \u200blarge area of central and eastern Europe, with other pockets over southern Britain, northern France and southern Sweden.<\/p>\n

The average high across western Europe on \u200cFriday was about 31 degrees, which is 8 degrees above what was typical from 1961 to 1990, data from the Reuters Climate Monitor showed. The temperature for Europe as a whole was 1.6 degrees above the 1961-1990 norm.<\/p>\n

In western Germany, more than 2,000 people fled their homes early on Friday morning to take shelter in a nearby primary school after a \u2060wildfire in the nearby H\u00fcrtgen forest spread to within a few hundred metres of the village of Gey.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis forest fire threatens to hit the local \u200ccommunity hard,\u201d Mona Neubaur, the deputy premier of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, posted on social media. Unexploded second world war ordnance was also hampering firefighting efforts.<\/p>\n

The news agency dpa reported explosions could be heard as munitions detonated in the flames, forcing firefighters to stay out of the area, not far from the Belgian border, for safety. German army tanks and helicopters were providing support.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Opinion: Europe needs to start treating the climate emergency as a threat to our national securityOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

In Croatia, a wildfire driven by strong winds descended on the tourist town of Lokva Rogoznica on the Dalmatian coast overnight. Police said they had located the body of one person while searching burned areas on Friday afternoon.<\/p>\n

Emergency \u200bshelters opened in several nearby towns. Of 36 people treated by ambulance services in the city of Split, about 25km to the north, 14 were admitted to hospital and seven had life-threatening injuries, local health officials said. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a strong fire, it swept everything on \u200cits way \u2026 there has been huge material damage,\u201d Slavko Tucakovi\u0107, the regional chief fire commander, said on Friday, adding that the blaze appeared to have calmed by Friday morning.<\/p>\n

The country\u2019s prime minister, Andrej \u200cPlenkovi\u0107, said on a visit to nearby Omi\u0161, where the evacuees were sheltering in a sports hall, that the blaze was \u201cone of the worst fires in recent years\u201d but \u201cmost importantly\u201d there were no confirmed fatalities so far.<\/p>\n

In northeast Spain, an army unit removed the remains of three 11th-century Aragonese kings from the San Juan de la Pe\u00f1a monastery after it was threatened by a wildfire and took them to a \u200bmuseum in nearby Huesca.<\/p>\n

The fire, which began on Monday, intensified on \u2060Thursday, authorities said, driven by higher temperatures and strong winds that have enabled it to burn through more \u200bthan 9,000 hectares, forcing \u200bthe evacuation of 16 towns and villages.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0World\u2019s seas hit hottest temperature on record for July, say scientistsOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

A \u200bmuch larger wildfire in southern Spain also worsened on Thursday. It has so far burned 31,000 hectares in the province of Huelva and forced the evacuation of about 700 people.<\/p>\n

In northern Greece, a fleet of small boats evacuated about 500 holidaymakers from beaches on Thursday as a forest fire threatened Siviri and Fourka, two popular resorts on the Halkidiki peninsula, south of the city of Thessaloniki.<\/p>\n

The 2km-long fire front, with flames up to 30 metres high, was brought under control later in the day, the regional civil protection chief said, though crews remained on alert for flare-ups. Two injured firefighters were taken to hospital, the fire service added.<\/p>\n

A maximum level-five alert for fires was issued for much of the Greek mainland and officials in Halkidiki have banned access to the region\u2019s dense pine forests.<\/p>\n

In the UK, wildfires raced across the West Midlands, burning several houses to the ground in \u201cone of the most significant\u201d incidents the region\u2019s fire service has ever had to deal with, the regional fire chief, Simon Tuhill, said. \u2013 Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Almost 500 people have been arrested on suspicion of starting wildfires in France since the start of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65976,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[606,824,16,5,65,4893],"class_list":["post-65975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-france","tag-belgium","tag-climate-change","tag-croatia","tag-france","tag-germany","tag-greece"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65975\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}