Heat wave in Europe: 5 things to know

Most of Europe returned to more typical summer temperatures on Wednesday morning, but the aftermath continued from the unprecedented heatwave that threatened lives, destroyed buildings and disrupted daily routines across much of the continent this week.

This is what we are still seeing.

Fires continue in southern Europe.

Summer fires are a recurring feature in parts of Europe, but flames that have erupted across the continent in the past week have hit earlier and harder than usual, and sometimes in unexpected places, officials said.

Fires continued to burn in parts of southern Europe, in countries such as Spain and Portugal where the heat was still intense on Wednesday.

In GreeceHundreds of firefighters were still battling a high winds fueled fire in the mountains north of Athens, forcing hundreds of residents to flee.

Authorities ordered the evacuation of several villages on Tuesday afternoon after the fire engulfed the forest, fueled by winds approaching the storm.

A children’s hospital was evacuated and police officers helped firefighters remove the elderly from their homes.

The situation is improving in Spain, where firefighters have managed to extinguish half of the forest fires that have ravaged the country in recent days, consuming over 570 square kilometers of forest and killing two people, including a firefighter.

Close 15 fires they were still active across the country on Wednesday morning.

Prime Minister of Spain Pedro Sanchez drew a clear line between wildfires and global warming.

“Climate change kills,” Sánchez said Wednesday as he pushed for more ambitious, nationally coordinated green policies.

French authorities were cautiously optimistic on Wednesday as firefighters were mostly able to contain two massive forest fires that burned nearly 200 square kilometers of dry pine forest in the southwestern Gironde.

President Emanuele Macron later that day he met with firefighters and other emergency workers in the area.

He said France will invest in more firefighting equipment, such as water fall airplanes, and will review the rules governing forest maintenance.

Vincent Ferrier, a local official, told reporters that the flames spread very little during the night thanks to the lower temperatures and higher humidity.

For the first time in days, he said no further evacuations have been planned.

“The fire moves slower,” he said.

“But we wantcontinue to be careful“.

Authorities in the area have preventively evacuated some 37,000 people in the past week and no deaths have been reported.

Structural damage was also minimal, although some campsites around Arcachon Bay, a popular tourist destination, were burned to the ground.

Police released a man who had been arrested on arson charges in connection with one of the fires.

In Brittany, a region of northwestern France not used to summer fires, a fire has burned thousands of acres since Monday but is slowing down, local authorities said.

London firefighters have had their busiest day since Second World War, says the mayor.

At least 41 buildings were destroyed In the fires and 16 firefighters were injured on Tuesday as they fought multiple fires amid an unprecedented heat wave, London Mayor Sadiq Khan said, urging the world to do more to tackle the climate crisis.

He said London firefighters responded to some on Tuesday seven times more calls usual.

On a normal day, firefighters can get about 350 calls, he said, and on a busy day, about 500.

On Tuesday, the mayor stressed, they received more than 2,600.

“This is not normal; these are exceptional times,” Khan told BBC News.

The city was one of 15 areas in the country whose firefighters reported a “serious accident”.

The fires continued to burn until Tuesday night, but on Wednesday morning London firefighters said most of the large-scale fires they had seen were under control.

Khan said the firefighters had been “under immense pressure” and that they were volunteers recruited and canceled training sessions to gather enough people to fight the flames.

However, a spokesman for the Union of Firefighters said Rampant cuts and staff shortages they had also severely reduced the capacity of firefighters in recent years and directly impacted the brigade’s ability to respond to fires on Tuesday.

There was still no indication until Wednesday as to the exact cause of the fires, but the unusually dry weather of the past few days has created conditions for bait.

Khan told BBC News that most of the fires were fires grass and that the lack of rain over the past month had created “incredibly dry” conditions that allowed the flames to spread rapidly.

The heat will continue in much of Europe.

For parts of Europe, forecasters expected relief for the rest of the week, with more moderate temperatures and some rain starting Wednesday.

In London, forecasters said the rest of the week should feel more like a typical British summer.

London was expected to peak at 27 degrees Celsius (81 Fahrenheit) on Wednesday, with a maximum expected to drop to 23 degrees Celsius (73 Fahrenheit) on Friday, according to the Met Office, the UK’s National Weather Service.

La Teste-de-Buch, a small town in southwestern France that has been battling wildfires for more than a week, was the subject of a moderate storm warning on Wednesday, with forecasts of up to 26 degrees Celsius (79 Fahrenheit). during the day.

amsterdamwhich peaked at 95 Fahrenheit (35 degrees Celsius) on Tuesday, remained under an extremely high temperature warning on Wednesday, with a high of 79 Fahrenheit (26 degrees Celsius) and the possibility of thunderstorms.

But the maximum is expected to drop to 70 degrees Fahrenheit (21 degrees Celsius) with some showers on Thursday, according to AccuWeathera forecasting service.

Unusually warm weather is expected to continue this week in the southern and eastern parts of the continent, said Jonathan Porter, AccuWeather’s chief meteorologist.

Relief is likely to reach Germany on Thursday and Poland on Friday, while heat is expected to persist this week in Portugal, Spain, southern France and northern Italy, he said.

“We continue to warn people that this will be extreme heat and many people will continue to be threatened for days to come,” he said.

There are still travel disruptions in Britain.

The record temperature didn’t make it particularly comfortable for commuters in Britain, as transport authorities and rail services warned people to stay home or face major disruptions.

Until Monday and Tuesday, transit authorities suspended services after extreme heat caused disruptions to lines across the country, damaging roads. overhead power lines fueling trains on some sections of the railroad and setting fires on others.

The outages continued until Wednesday even as the weather cooled and the British rail network said engineers were still inspecting the tracks and repairing the damage.

Direct trains from London to Scotland and London to Cambridge were suspended in the morning, while some other lines had limited schedules.

The problems left many passengers stranded at King’s Cross, one of London’s busiest hubs, where photos ofand crazy review the schedules of the canceled services.

Heather J. Fitt, an author transiting through the station from Portsmouth on the south coast to attend a crime literature conference in Harrogate, northern England, said the experience was stressful.

When he got off at King’s Cross, he found his next train had been canceled.

“It was hot and stuffy and no one knew what was going on,” he said.

The unrest prompted the British rail network to set up a task force to work on recommendations to withstand future heatwaves.

“The weather we experienced this week has put tremendous pressure on our infrastructure, our staff and our passengers,” said Andrew Haines, CEO of the network, on Wednesday.

“With extreme weather events becoming more frequent as our climate continues to change, we need to do everything we can to make our railroad as resilient as possible.”

So what the hell was that?

In London, people woke up Wednesday morning with merciful relief: perfectly reasonable temperatures, with a sweet, refreshing breeze. Taking a walk was no longer an act of resistance.

Taking a walk was nice.

For some, the heat of the previous two days had been a life-threatening affair.

The London Ambulance Service reported that incidents related to heat exposure have increased 10 times.

For others, it was a frustrating annoyance and kind of a headache:

This shouldn’t be happening in Britain, right? It’s not that bad?

All over Europe, scorching temperatures have raised questions about how to cope with such an unusual summer heat.

Many have been forced to consider the reality of climate change and reflect on whether the past two days have been a sweaty anomaly or a taste of a new normal.

Each heat wave seems to undermine the feeling that everything will be fine.

Busy periods like this provide signs of a nascent understanding of what might be in store, such as a larger market for air conditioners in Britain, a country that generally shuns them; governments that develop policies to reduce overheating in homes; and news coverage that does not shy away from the link with climate change.

For two days, the heat was a overwhelming presence every second, an unwelcome guest demanding your full attention.

But it’s over for now.

The breeze is nice and the pub opens early.

Niki Kitsantonis and Constant Méheut contributed to the reporting.

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