CTV National News: Heatwave fuels deadly wildfires in Europe
At least three people have died due to wildfires in Spain, Albania, and Greece. The countries are now asking for assistance from the European Union.
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CTV News
2 hours ago
- CTV News
Spain deploys 500 more troops to battle wildfires during extended heatwave
LISBON, Portugal — Spain is deploying a further 500 soldiers to battle wildfires that have torn through parched woodland during a prolonged spell of scorching weather, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said Sunday. The decision to add to the more than 1,400 troops already on wildfire duty came as authorities struggled to contain forest blazes, especially in the northwestern Galicia region, and awaited the arrival of promised aircraft reinforcements from other European countries. Firefighters are tackling 12 major wildfires in Galicia, all of them near the city of Ourense, the head of the Galician regional government Alfonso Rueda told a press conference with Sánchez. 'Homes are still under threat so we have lockdowns in place and are carrying out evacuations,' Rueda said. Galicia has been battling the spreading flames for more than a week. Temperatures in Spain could reach 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit) in some areas on Sunday, the Spanish national weather agency AEMET said. On Saturday, the maximum temperature was 44.7 degrees Celsius (112.46 degrees Fahrenheit) in the southern city of Cordoba, it said. 'This Sunday, when extraordinarily high temperatures are expected, the danger of wildfires is extreme in most of the country,' AEMET said on the social platform X. The fires in Spain this year have burned 158,000 hectares (390,000 acres), according to the European Union's European Forest Fire Information System. That is an area roughly as big as metropolitan London. Europe has been warming twice as fast as the global average since the 1980s, according to the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service. Scientists say that climate change is exacerbating the frequency and intensity of heat and dryness in parts of Europe, making the region more vulnerable to wildfires. Spain was expecting the arrival of two Dutch water-dumping planes that were to join aircraft from France and Italy already helping Spanish authorities under a European cooperation agreement. Firefighters from other countries are also expected to arrive in the region in coming days, Spain's Civil Protection Agency chief Virginia Barcones told public broadcaster RTVE. National rail operator Renfe said it suspended Madrid-Galicia high-speed train services scheduled for Sunday due to the fires. Galician authorities advised people to wear face masks and limit their time spent outdoors to avoid inhaling smoke and ash. Portugal is set for cooler weather in coming days after a spate of severe woodland fires. A national state of alert due to wildfires was enacted Aug. 2 and was due to end Sunday, a day before two Swedish firefighting planes were to arrive. As in Spain, Portugal's resources have been stretched. On Sunday, more than 4,000 firefighters and more than 1,300 vehicles were deployed, as well as 17 aircraft, the country's Civil Protection Agency said. The scorched area of forest in Portugal so far this year is 17 times higher than in 2024, at around 139,000 hectares, according to preliminary calculations by the Institute for the Conservation of Nature and Forests, a government body. Greece, Bulgaria, Montenegro and Albania have also requested help from the EU's firefighting force in recent days to deal with forest fires. The force has already been activated as many times this year as in all of last year's summer fire season. Barry Hatton, The Associated Press
CBC
7 hours ago
- CBC
Current N.L. wildfires reminiscent of the devastating summer of 1961
"There's a type of flower that closes up at night when it gets dark, and those flowers were closing up in the middle of the day, at noon-hour. The smoke was just so thick." That's how Marvin Barnes, who was six years old and living in Valleyfield at the time, remembers the summer of 1961 in Bonavista Bay. That year, record dry conditions on the island of Newfoundland led to a spate of wildfires that burned for more than three months. Then, as now, crews had to contend with blazes in several different locations at once. Then, as now, thousands of people were evacuated from their communities and could only wait for news on the fate of their homes. The province took steps that will sound familiar to those of us living through this year's ferocious wildfire season. Authorities banned open fires, prohibited travel through the woods, and ultimately declared a state of emergency and asked the Canadian government to send military support. When the flames finally guttered out, they left behind millions of acres of scorched earth and a province determined to change its approach to forest fires in the future. Fighting for the life of the town The summer of 1961 was an unusually dry one. Less than an inch (25.4 milimetres) of rain had fallen on Newfoundland's east coast from late May to early August, compared to an annual average of almost 200 millimetres The dry spell made a tinderbox of Newfoundland's forests and fields, and by mid-June there were a dozen major wildfires burning out of control. One of the most destructive of them was in Bonavista North. First spotted on June 12 near Traverse Brook, it spread rapidly up the coast to Hare Bay, where hundreds of women and children were forced to spend the night in schooners offshore. That was only the beginning. The conflagration would burn for three months and, at its peak, extend over 200,000 hectares. When then-minister of Mines and Resources W. J. Keough flew over the area in early August, he said the smoke from the blaze furled tens of thousands of feet into the air "like the burst from an atomic bomb." Dr. Rex Gibbons, a geologist who would eventually become minister of Mines and Energy himself under the Wells government, was fifteen years old in 1961 and had just graduated from grade eleven when he and his family learned the fire was moving up the shore toward them. "We'd heard of houses burning in Hare Bay and other places along the way," he said in an interview, "and we knew the fire was heading towards Lumsden, towards all the towns here on the coast." While his mother and six younger siblings evacuated to Lumsden North, which was out on a sandy peninsula and safe from the flames, Gibbons and his father stayed behind with the men of the community to help build a fire break. "Every capable person in Lumsden was on the fire line," he remembers. "We were fighting for the life of the town and our own livelihoods." Beating down the burning grass with shovels and spraying hotspots with water from the cans strapped to their backs, they managed to stop the flames from reaching the town. Gibbons and some of his friends later went west along the shore to Carmanville to help fight the fire there. Wildfires lead to improvements in N.L.'s forestry service To prevent further outbreaks, the government banned open fires except at designated sites in public parks and restricted outdoor smoking. They prohibited travel through the woods on the Avalon and Burin peninsulas, including for the purposes of camping, fishing, and berry picking. Officials also introduced mandatory jail sentences for anyone found to have started a fire in the forests, whether intentionally or through negligence. Two young men were sentenced to serve six months in the penitentiary for deliberately setting a fire in a forest in central Newfoundland. Eventually, the provincial government declared a state of emergency, and Ottawa dispatched over 1,200 Canadian troops to help get the blazes under control. By the end of summer, the fires had obliterated dozens of homes and, according to estimates at the time, more than half a million hectares of wilderness. They wiped out Bonavista North's thriving logging industry, which many residents relied on for their winter livelihoods, and, in the words of then-deputy Resources minister Stuart Peters, destroyed "a combination of soils, plants and animals that took from fifteen to twenty thousand years to establish." All that remained across great swaths of the province were ghostly white spruce trunks and ashes on bedrock. But for all its tragedy, the summer of 1961 led to permanent improvements in the way Newfoundland and Labrador deals with wildfires. The scope of the disaster revealed that the province's forestry service lacked the resources to fight such large fires, so the province purchased six aircraft: two Canso water bombers, one large helicopter for transporting firefighters and gear, and three small fixed-wing planes. The government also established a network of 12 weather stations to monitor for hazardous conditions across the province. The fires left an indelible mark not only on landscapes and institutions, but on the people of the province. For Gibbons, the experience is something that those who lived through it will never forget. "We all remember '61."
CTV News
12 hours ago
- CTV News
West Dalhousie, N.S., wildfire nearly doubles in size overnight prompting state of emergency
Watch The County of Annapolis has declared a state of emergency as wildfires continue to impact the community, CTV's Paul Hollingsworth reports.
