Infernos devastate forests as Europe's temperatures rise again
Wildfires raged across southern Europe on Sunday, forcing thousands of people to evacuate their homes and prompting Tour de France officials to ban spectators from a stage of the race.
PARIS - Wildfires raged across southern Europe on Sunday, forcing thousands of people to evacuate their homes and prompting Tour de France officials to ban spectators from a stage of the race. Hundreds of firefighters are battling blazes that have devastated more than 19,000 hectares of land -- an area more than twice the size of Manhattan -- across Portugal, Spain, France and Greece. And temperatures are on the rise again, predicted to reach 40C in parts of a region still suffering the aftermath of last week's record-breaking heatwave. Some 10,500 people were being evacuated from their homes near the city of Perpignan in southwestern France as firefighters tried to control a blaze that has devoured 1,650 hectares, authorities said. "The fire came within 300 metres of the houses. We were taken aback by how fast it spread, it was staggering -- bordering on panic," said Patrice, a 53-year-old resident of the village of Trevillach, who did not wish to give his surname. "We started seeing smoke around 10:30 pm, then it kept coming closer and closer. Someone from the town hall knocked on our door around 1:00 am to tell us to leave," said Charlotte Pignol, 30, who was evacuated from her home overnight in the area. "There were fire trucks everywhere, and the smell of smoke was overwhelming," she said. The blazes come shortly after a heatwave in June, one of Europe's worst, during which thousands of excess deaths were registered and which would have been "virtually impossible" without climate change, the World Weather Attribution group of scientists said. With the mercury set to rise again in the coming days, authorities expressed alarm that the annual summer wildfire season had started a month early.