MADRID, Aug 10 (Reuters) – A large wildfire in southwestern Spain was burning beyond firefighters’ ability to extinguish it on Monday, regional authorities said, as \u200chot and windy weather fuelled other blazes raging across the country.<\/p>\n
With consecutive heatwaves \u200cscorching much of Europe, the Mediterranean nation is facing a devastating summer wildfire season, with over 244,000 \u200bhectares (603,000 acres) of countryside burnt in 400 fires so far this year, according to estimates by the European Forest Fire Information System.<\/p>\n
That is an area six times larger than at the same time last year, while across Europe, record heat and droughts this summer \u2013 which \u200cscientists say are exacerbated by \u2060global warming \u2013 have wreaked havoc on power production, shipping and public health systems.<\/p>\n
FLYING EMBERS SPREAD FIRES IN ALL DIRECTIONS<\/p>\n
Andalusia’s regional head of \u2060emergencies, Antonio Sanz, told reporters that extinguishing the fire in the southwest of the country around the medieval town of Niebla was akin to a “long-distance obstacle race” and was expected to \u200blast \u200bseveral days.<\/p>\n
It has already affected a surface of \u200bnearly 20,000 hectares.<\/p>\n
He added that the \u200ccombination of wind gusts, the area’s rugged terrain, and convective phenomena creating fire clouds was spreading flying embers in all directions, causing secondary fires to break out.<\/p>\n
Nearly 500 people have been evacuated from the area while further precautionary measures were being assessed, Sanz said.<\/p>\n
Other wildfires remained active in the central province of Segovia and Castellon in the \u200ceast.<\/p>\n
In Segovia, a fire that started on Saturday \u200bwhen a vehicle ignited on a motorway forced \u200b176 inhabitants of two towns to \u200bleave their homes as it rapidly spread across surrounding pastures.<\/p>\n
Local authorities \u200csaid on Monday the situation was improving \u200bafter humidity increased overnight, \u200bbut the large number of trees dotting the granite-strewn landscape could complicate firefighting efforts.<\/p>\n
Another fire in Castellon’s Tirig that has so far burnt around 800 hectares \u200band prompted the evacuation \u200cof 900 people was still active but close to being stabilised after “very favourable” \u200bweather overnight, according to the regional government of Valencia.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by David Latona; \u200bEditing by Andrei Khalip AND David Holmes)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MADRID, Aug 10 (Reuters) – A large wildfire in southwestern Spain was burning beyond firefighters’ ability to extinguish…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68639,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[22773,17,27008],"class_list":["post-68638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-spain","tag-antonio-sanz","tag-spain","tag-windy-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68638","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=68638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}