Thousands of Spaniards evacuated from the path of huge wildfires were returning home on Wednesday while in France firefighters braced for worsening conditions in their own battle with raging flames.<\/p>\n
The neighbouring countries have been gripped by some of the worst forest fires in living memory over the past week, burning vast areas and forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands of people.<\/p>\n
Late on Tuesday, Spain lifted more than a dozen evacuation orders for municipalities west of the capital Madrid, the centre of the worst of the fires.<\/p>\n
\u201c24,000 evacuated individuals have been able to return to their homes, and another 20,000 have been released from confinement in the Community of Madrid,\u201d central government delegate to the region Francisco Martin Aguirre said on X late on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Similar measures were lifted in the Valencia region, in the east of the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m happy \u2014 I couldn\u2019t wait to come home and have my coffee and breakfast,\u201d said Maria Jesus Perez Blanca, a woman in her seventies who was one of about a dozen returnees at the cafes of Aldea del Fresno, west of Madrid on Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n
Beside her, her daughter Susana Barrul, a 39-year-old housewife said she was glad to be back in her home and returning to the daily routine of \u201cgetting up in the morning, having coffee, going shopping, coming home, and cooking\u201d.<\/p>\n
The central government\u2019s Madrid delegate\u2019s office said on Wednesday that better overnight weather conditions had helped crews reduce the intensity of the fires and stabilise their perimeter.<\/p>\n
Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska told reporters on Tuesday that firefighters were containing the fires and aimed Wednesday to stabilise and extinguish all the flames if possible.<\/p>\n
Spain\u2019s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez meanwhile said Wednesday that efforts to extinguish a major wildfire near Madrid were progressing \u201cfavourably\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe the next 12 hours will be very important \u2014 they will be decisive for the work of consolidating the work that the civil protection service has done,\u201d Sanchez said.<\/p>\n
In France, the Gironde prefecture reported a second calm night and said the massive fire in the region west of France\u2019s wine-making capital of Bordeaux was stable.<\/p>\n
\u2013 \u2018Extreme temperatures\u2019 \u2013<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, weather conditions were set to worsen on Wednesday as the fourth heatwave of an already intense summer arrived.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe fear today,\u201d said Jeremy Presi, a local business owner volunteering to help firefighters at a water refilling station.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe tourists can get in their cars and get out of here. Here, it\u2019s our home,\u201d he said, as fire trucks headed past towards the flames.<\/p>\n
The Gironde and neighbouring Landes departments are under an orange-level warning from midday, with inland temperatures of 41C forecast and 38C on the coast.<\/p>\n
Firefighters fear that strengthening winds could fan embers and reignite the blaze.<\/p>\n
Authorities expect westerly winds from early afternoon, with gusts of 30 to 45 km\/h (19 to 28 mph) and falling humidity levels.<\/p>\n
Wednesday \u201cwill be an important day that we will be watching very closely, given the extreme temperatures we are going to have,\u201d said Gironde fire chief Lieutenant Colonel Eric Pitault on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Despite those anxieties, 57,000 residents of three towns near Bordeaux, who were evacuated on Friday and Saturday, were to be allowed to return home, the department said.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Greek fire \u2013<\/p>\n
Europe has been gripped by successive heatwaves and a major drought this year, which scientists have attributed to human-caused climate change.<\/p>\n
Extreme heat has parched vegetation that had grown vigorously during wet weather earlier in the year, creating tinderbox conditions.<\/p>\n
In Spain, 207,000 hectares (511,000 acres) of land has burned nationwide, among the largest areas in any January to July period on record according to the European Forest Fire Information System. Spanish authorities have reported marginally different figures.<\/p>\n
In France, it has put the figure at 92,000 hectares, the largest on records that date back two decades.<\/p>\n
While the current focus is on Western Europe, the EU warned this week that fire-prone conditions would spread towards the centre of the continent in the coming days.<\/p>\n
In Greece, firefighters were battling a blaze on the Aegean island of Paros on Wednesday, where strong winds were fanning the flames.<\/p>\n
Two aircraft and five helicopters were deployed alongside about 100 firefighters to contain the fire, the Greek fire service said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thousands of Spaniards evacuated from the path of huge wildfires were returning home on Wednesday while in France…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28032,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1150,6380,17],"class_list":["post-62657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-spain","tag-international","tag-mna","tag-spain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62657\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}