{"id":343893,"date":"2025-08-14T12:57:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T12:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/343893\/"},"modified":"2025-08-14T12:57:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T12:57:10","slug":"wildfires-claim-third-life-in-spain-as-intense-heat-continues-across-europe-wildfires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/343893\/","title":{"rendered":"Wildfires claim third life in Spain as intense heat continues across Europe | Wildfires"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wildfires raging across Spain have killed a third person as intense heat continues across vast swathes of Europe<\/a>, forcing overwhelmed governments to call in support from their neighbours.<\/p>\n

A volunteer firefighter died after battling a blaze in Castile and Le\u00f3n, authorities said on Thursday, after the death of a fellow volunteer in the same region on Tuesday. A man died on the outskirts of Madrid on Monday as he tried to save horses from a burning stable.<\/p>\n

\u201cDeath strikes us again with the loss of a second volunteer who has lost their life in Le\u00f3n,\u201d Spain\u2019s prime minister, Pedro S\u00e1nchez, said on Thursday. He thanked the \u201cheroes\u201d protecting people from fires and said \u201cthe threat remains extreme\u201d.<\/p>\n

In Patras, Greece\u2019s third-largest city, firefighters pushed back a wildfire that had burned through the outskirts of the port and forced the evacuation of a children\u2019s hospital and a retirement home. Local media reported that a 19-year-old man who had allegedly confessed to starting the blaze was among a number of arrests made in connection to it.<\/p>\n

The aftermath of the wildfire near Patras. Photograph: Anadolu\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

The Greek fire service spokesperson, Vasilios Vathrakoyannis, said the general situation had improved on all fronts after an all-night battle, but that a very high fire risk was still predicted for most areas of the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday is expected to be a very difficult day,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Spain has become the fifth country in a week to activate the EU\u2019s civil protection mechanism to fight the fires. The European Commission announced that two planes stationed in France were expected to be deployed in Spain on Thursday.<\/p>\n

Greece is expected to receive two Swedish helicopters stationed in Bulgaria under the mechanism, which it activated on Tuesday, while Bulgaria, Albania and Montenegro \u2013 where a soldier died fighting a fire near the capital \u2013 have also received support from firefighters from several EU countries.<\/p>\n

The EU\u2019s civil protection mechanism, which coordinates responses during wars and other crises, has been activated 16 times during the current fire season. The number of activations in 2025 is already the same as the figure for the whole of the 2024 fire season, the commission said.<\/p>\n

Volunteers run from the flames of a wildfire in Ourense province in north-west Spain. Photograph: AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Wildfires have burned more than 400,000 hectares in Europe so far this year, an increase of 87% compared with the average over the past two decades. France experienced its largest wildfire since 1949 last week.<\/p>\n

The two Spanish firefighters who died were using brush cutters to slow the spread of a fire when they were engulfed by the flames on Tuesday afternoon, according to the Spanish daily El Pa\u00eds. The fire is poised to become one of the largest in the country\u2019s history.<\/p>\n

Strong and variable winds spread flames that trapped the two men, the newspaper reported. One man died within a few hours, while the other, who suffered 85% burns, died after a day in hospital.<\/p>\n

Six people remain in hospital in the region with burns and serious injuries, local media reported.<\/p>\n

skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n

Sign up to This is Europe<\/p>\n

The most pressing stories and debates for Europeans \u2013 from identity to economics to the environment<\/p>\n

Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n

Firefighters work to extinguish a wildfire near the city of Patras in western Greece on Wednesday. Photograph: Aris Messinis\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

The deadly fires come as southern Europe suffers intense heat that has broken temperature records across the continent \u2013 made worse by fossil fuel pollution that traps sunlight and heats the planet \u2013 and which has dried out vegetation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s obvious that climate change is exacerbating the severity of fires,\u201d said Eduardo Rojas Briales, a forestry researcher at the Polytechnic University of Valencia and former deputy director general of the UN\u2019s Food and Agriculture Organization. \u201cBut it\u2019s not responsible to wait for greenhouse gas emissions to drop \u2026 as the sole approach to addressing the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

He called for additional policies such as ensuring dead plant material is kept at manageable levels, creating gaps in vegetation, for instance through reversing rural abandonment, and using prescribed burning.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no alternative but to build landscapes \u2026 that are truly resilient to fires,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

A report published on Thursday by XDI, a climate risk analysis group, found that the climate crisis has doubled the risk of infrastructure damage from forest fires in France, Italy, Greece, Romania and Bulgaria since 1990. It predicted risk would increase further still in future.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re all asking ourselves, how much worse can it get?\u201d said Karl Mallon, XDI\u2019s head of science and technology. \u201cAccording to our latest analysis, a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wildfires raging across Spain have killed a third person as intense heat continues across vast swathes of Europe,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":343894,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[2000,299,5187],"class_list":{"0":"post-343893","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-european"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115027236830666455","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=343893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343893\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/343894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=343893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=343893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=343893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}