{"id":349941,"date":"2025-08-16T20:09:14","date_gmt":"2025-08-16T20:09:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/349941\/"},"modified":"2025-08-16T20:09:14","modified_gmt":"2025-08-16T20:09:14","slug":"european-commission-intervenes-as-wildfires-kill-at-least-7-in-spain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/349941\/","title":{"rendered":"European Commission intervenes as wildfires kill at least 7 in Spain"},"content":{"rendered":"

The skeletal remains of a destroyed building still stand on Saturday in northwestern Spain’s Galicia province. Photo by Brais Lorenzo\/EPA<\/p>\n

Aug. 16 (UPI) — The European Commission is deploying firefighting aircraft to Spain, where at least seven have died as 14 wildfires have flared amid a European heat wave.<\/p>\n

The commission is sending an unknown number of water-bombing planes to help put out the wildfires in Spain and wildfire-impacted areas in the Balkans, The Guardian reported<\/a> on Saturday.\n<\/p>\n

The announcement came after a volunteer firefighter died on Thursday while fighting a wildfire in northern Spain’s Castile and Leon region.<\/p>\n

A total of seven people have died in the Spanish wildfires along the nation’s northern coastal areas, the BBC reported<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

“Death strikes us again with the loss of a second volunteer who has lost their life in Leon,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez<\/a> said on Thursday, as reported by The Guardian.<\/p>\n

He described firefighting volunteers as “heroes” who are protecting the Spanish people and said the wildfire “threat remains extreme.”<\/p>\n

Another volunteer firefighter died on Tuesday, and a Spanish man died while trying to save horses from a stable that caught fire near Madrid on Monday.<\/p>\n

Sanchez on Friday said wildfire conditions remain “very tough” as Spain’s national weather agency reported an “extreme fire risk” in northern and western Spain, the BBC reported.\n<\/p>\n

The weather service predicted highs up to 104 degrees in Spain, where several wildfires have merged into a single conflagration that has closed several of the region’s highways and halted rail services in northwestern Spain.<\/p>\n

Wildfires also have been reported in Portugal, France, Greece and the Balkans.<\/p>\n

Spain so far has reported about three times the number of wildfires that it normally experiences during a typical summer.<\/p>\n

The heatwave is predicted to continue at least until Monday with highs of up to 111 degrees with moderate winds that could spread airborne sparks and embers.<\/p>\n

The European Union reported 2,429 square miles of burnt land so far this year, and the Spanish wildfires account for more than 600 square miles of that total.<\/p>\n

Officials in Albania, Bulgaria, Greece and Montenegro have requested emergency assistance from the EU.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The skeletal remains of a destroyed building still stand on Saturday in northwestern Spain’s Galicia province. Photo by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":349942,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[2000,299,5187,1699,5338,2582,123794,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-349941","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","11":"tag-european-union","12":"tag-pedro-sanchez","13":"tag-top-news","14":"tag-weather-climate","15":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115040261099557775","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349941","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=349941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/349942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}