
A wildfire in southern France has killed 1 and injured several and is still spreading
About 1,500 firefighters worked overnight to contain the blaze, which broke out Tuesday afternoon in the village of Ribaute in the Aude region. It remained ''very active' on Wednesday and weather conditions were unfavorable, the local administration said in a statement.
One person died in their home and nine others were injured, and at least one person was missing, the statement said.
It said the fire had spread for 12 hours over 11,000 hectares of land, which is roughly equivalent to the size of the French capital. That makes it the biggest wildfire in France so far this summer.
Southern Europe has seen multiple large fires this summer. Scientists warn that climate change is exacerbating the frequency and intensity of heat and dryness, making the region more vulnerable to wildfires.
Europe is the world's fastest-warming continent, with temperatures increasing at twice the speed of the global average since the 1980s, according to the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service.
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Arab News
2 hours ago
- Arab News
France's huge wildfire will burn for days: authorities
SAINT-LAURENT-DE-LA-CABRERISSE, France: France's biggest wildfire in decades will burn for several more days even though it has been brought under control, authorities said Friday as hundreds of firefighters kept up a battle against the flames. The giant blaze in the southern department of Aude has burned through more than 17,000 hectares of land — an area bigger than Paris, killing one person, injuring 13 and destroying dozens of homes. About 2,000 firefighters are still on duty around the blaze which was declared under control on Thursday night. The fire will not be 'declared extinguished for several days,' said Christian Pouget, the prefect for Aude. 'There is still a lot of work to be done.' Authorities have banned access to the forests that were devastated by the fire until at least Sunday. They said that roads in the zone were too dangerous because of fallen electricity lines and other hazards. Pouget said that about 2,000 people forced to flee the flames had still not been allowed back to their homes. Hundreds of people are sleeping in school gyms and village halls across the region. The fire is the biggest in France's Mediterranean region for at least 50 years, according to government monitors. The southern region suffers more than others from wildfires. At its most intense, the flames were going through around 1,000 hectares of land per hour, according to authorities in the nearby city of Narbonne. Two days of strong and changing winds made the blaze difficult to predict. A 65-year-old woman, who had refused to evacuate, was found dead in her scorched house, while 13 people were injured, 11 of them firefighters. The wildfire is a 'catastrophe on an unprecedented scale,' Prime Minister Francois Bayrou said Wednesday during a visit to the affected region. 'What is happening today is linked to global warming and linked to drought,' Bayrou said. Environment minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher wrote on X Thursday that the fire was the largest in France since 1949. The country has already seen around 9,000 wildfires this summer, mainly close to its Mediterranean coast. The Aude department in particular has recorded an increase in areas burned in recent years, aggravated by low rainfall and the uprooting of vineyards, which used to help slow down the advance of fires. In Saint-Laurent-de-la-Cabrerisse, the village hardest hit by the fire, thick smoke rose Thursday from the pine hills overlooking the vineyards where dry grass was still burning. With Europe facing new August heatwaves, many areas are on alert for wildfires. Portugal on Thursday extended emergency measures because of the heightened risk of fires. Near the Spanish town of Tarifa, fire crews secured areas near hotels and other tourist accommodations after controlling a major blaze that also destroyed hundreds of hectares. Antonio Sanz, interior minister for Andalusia's regional government, said on X that 'the return of all evacuated people' had been authorized after the fire was 'stabilized.' Spanish broadcaster TVE reported that the fire started in a camper van at a beach campsite, and spread quickly in strong winds. About 1,550 people and 5,500 vehicles were evacuated from camps, hotels and homes, Sanz said. Spain is experiencing a heatwave with temperatures nearing 40C in many regions, and officials reported 1,060 excess deaths in July that could be attributed to intense heat. Climate experts say that global warming is driving longer, more intense and more frequent heatwaves around the world, making for more favorable forest fire conditions.


Arab News
8 hours ago
- Arab News
France's largest wildfire in decades contained after devastating southern region and wine country
Late Thursday, the region's top government official said the fire was containedThe fire swept through 15 communes in the Corbières mountain region, destroying or damaging at least 36 homes, with a full damage assessment still underwayVILLEROUGE LA CREMADE, France: France's largest wildfire in decades was contained Thursday after burning more than 160 square kilometers (62 square miles) in the country's southern wine region and claiming one life, local authorities blaze erupted Tuesday and tore through the Aude region, spreading rapidly due to hot, dry weather. Cooler overnight temperatures and calmer winds slowed its advance and allowed firefighters to make Thursday, the region's top government official said the fire was contained. However, residents were warned not to return home without authorization, as many roads remained blocked and fire swept through 15 communes in the Corbières mountain region, destroying or damaging at least 36 homes, with a full damage assessment still underway. One person died at home, and at least 13 others were injured, including 11 firefighters, according to local authorities. Three people who were reported missing have been found investigation is underway to determine what sparked the fire was the largest recorded since France's national fire database was created in France's minister for ecological transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, called the blaze the worst since 1949 and linked it to climate change.'It is a fire that is clearly a consequence of climate change and drought in this region,' she told France Info the breakthrough, officials warned the situation remained fragile.'We still have a few days before we can say that the fire is completely out,' region administrator Christian Pouget said. 'The battle is not over region's economy relies heavily on winemaking and tourism — both fire began in the village of Ribaute, in a rural, wooded area known for its wineries. Pouget said between 8 and 9 square kilometers (more than 3 square miles) of vineyards had burned. Officials estimate 80 percent of local vines were either destroyed or damaged — and even the grapes that survived may be too smoke-tainted to produce quality wine.'The vineyards are burnt and the landscape is gone,' said Batiste Caval, a seventh-generation winemaker near vineyards acted as natural firebreaks, leaving a surreal patchwork of scorched hills and untouched green vines. But across the Corbières, entire stretches of historic vineyards were reduced to ash. Caval, who owns 60 of the 400 hectares farmed by a local cooperative, said the fire may tip already struggling winemakers into crisis after years of drought and other harsh vines typically take three years to bear usable fruit. Some can produce wine for decades, even up to half a century.'It's very sad to think about the image we're going to give of our Corbières region, with its devastated landscapes and desperate women and men, not just today or tomorrow, but for weeks and months to come. It will take years to rebuild,' said Xavier de Volontat, the mayor of Saint-Laurent-de-la-Cabrerisse, speaking to and tourists in nearby areas had been asked to stay indoors unless ordered to evacuate. Those forced to flee were housed overnight in emergency shelters across 17 Europe has seen multiple large fires this summer. Scientists warn that climate change is exacerbating the frequency and intensity of heat and dryness, making the region more vulnerable to wildfires. Last month, a wildfire that reached the southern port of Marseille, France's second-largest city, left around 300 people is the world's fastest-warming continent, with temperatures increasing at twice the speed of the global average since the 1980s, according to the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service.


Arab News
15 hours ago
- Arab News
Third-hottest July on record wreaks climate havoc
PARIS: The third-hottest July worldwide ended a string of record-breaking temperatures, but many regions were devastated by extreme weather amplified by global warming, the European climate monitoring service said Thursday. Heavy rains flooded Pakistan and northern China; Canada, Scotland and Greece struggled to tame wildfires intensified by persistent drought; and many nations in Asia and Scandinavia recorded new average highs for the month. "Two years after the hottest July on record, the recent streak of global temperature records is over," Carlo Buontempo, director of the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service, said in a statement. "But that does not mean climate change has stopped," he said. "We continue to witness the effects of a warming world." As in June, July showed a slight dip compared to the preceding two years, averaging 1.25 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial (1850-1900) era. 2023 and 2024 warmed above that benchmark by more than 1.5C, which is the Paris Agreement target set in 2015 for capping the rise in global temperatures at relatively safe levels. That deceptively small increase has been enough to make storms, heatwaves and other extreme weather events far more deadly and destructive. "We continued to witness the effect of a warming world in events such as extreme heatwaves and catastrophic floods in July," Buontempo said. Last month, temperatures exceeded 50C in the Gulf, Iraq and -- for the first time -- Turkiye, while torrential rains killed hundreds of people in China and Pakistan. In Spain, more than a thousand deaths were attributed by a public institute to the heat in July, half as many as in the same period in 2024. The main source of the CO2 driving up temperatures is well known: the burning of oil, coal and gas to generate energy. "Unless we rapidly stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, we should expect not only new temperature records but also a worsening of impacts," Buontempo said. Global average temperatures are calculated using billions of satellite and weather readings, both on land and at sea, and the data used by Copernicus extends back to 1940. Even if July was milder in some places than in previous years, 11 countries experienced their hottest July in at least a half-century, including China, Japan, North Korea, Tajikistan, Bhutan, Brunei and Malaysia, according to AFP calculations. In Europe, Nordic countries saw an unprecedented string of hot days, including more than 20 days above 30C across Finland. More than half of the land in Europe and along the Mediterranean basin experienced the worst drought conditions in the first three weeks of July since monitoring began in 2012, according to an AFP analysis of data from the European Drought Observatory (EDO). In contrast, temperatures were below normal in North and South America, India and parts of Australia and Africa, as well as in Antarctica. Last month was also the third-hottest July on record for sea surface temperatures. Locally, however, several ocean records for July were broken: in the Norwegian Sea, in parts of the North Sea, in the North Atlantic west of France and Britain. The extent of Arctic sea ice was 10 percent below average, the second lowest for a July in 47 years of satellite observations, virtually tied with the readings of 2012 and 2021. Diminishing sea ice is a concern not because it adds to sea levels, but because it replaces the snow and ice that reflect almost all the Sun's energy back into space with deep blue ocean, which absorbs it. Ninety percent of the excess heat generated by global warming is absorbed by the oceans. In Antarctica, sea ice extent is the third lowest on record for this month. "Human activities are causing the world to warm at an unprecedented rate," Piers Forster, Director of the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures at the University of Leeds, told AFP in commenting on the new data. On top of the human-driven warming, he explained, there are year-to-year changes caused by natural phenomena, such as the El Nino -- a shift in wind patterns across the southern Pacific -- and volcanic activity that helped push global temperatures past the 1.5C threshold over the last two years. "These variations are now reducing, dropping us back from the record-breaking temperatures," said Forster, who heads a consortium of 60 top scientists that track core changes in Earth's climate system. "But the reprieve is only temporary," he added. "We can expect the the high records to be broken again in the near future."