MADRID (AP) — Firefighters in Spain, Portugal and Greece battled ongoing wildfires Friday, an important religious holiday in all three countries, as persistent hot, dry conditions challenged efforts to contain the blazes.
Spain was fighting 14 major fires, according to Virginia Barcones, general director of emergency services. Temperatures were expected to climb over the weekend.
“Today will once again be a very tough day, with an extreme risk of new fires,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez wrote on X.
The national weather agency AEMET warned of extreme fire risk in most of the country, including where the largest blazes were burning in the north and west. A heat wave which brought temperatures exceeding 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) on several days this month was expected to last through Monday.
Fires in the Galicia region forced the closure of several highways. The high speed rail line connecting it to Spain's capital, Madrid, remained suspended.
The fires in Spain this year have burned 158,000 hectares or 610 square miles, according to the European Union’s European Forest Fire Information System. That is an area roughly as big as metropolitan London.
The wildfires raged on Friday as many European countries celebrated a religious holiday devoted to the Virgin Mary, known in Catholic countries like Spain and Portugal as the Feast of the Assumption.
In Portugal, nearly 4,000 firefighters were battling fires on Friday. Seven major fires were active. Authorities extended the state of alert until Sunday as high temperatures were expected to last through the weekend.
The Portuguese government on Friday requested assistance from the EU’s civil protection mechanism, a firefighting force that European countries in need can call upon. A day before, Spain received two Canadair water bomber aircraft after requesting EU help to tackle blazes for the first time ever.
In the past week, Greece, Bulgaria, Montenegro and Albania have also requested help from the EU’s firefighting force to deal with forest fires. The force has already been activated as many times this year as all of last year's fire season.
On Friday, a wildfire in Greece burned out of control for a fourth day on the island of Chios, prompting several more overnight evacuations.
Two water-dropping planes and two helicopters were operating in the north of the island in the eastern Aegean Sea, where local authorities said a lull in high winds was helping firefighters early Friday.
Following a series of large fires in western Greece earlier this week, the fire service was on alert Friday outside Athens and nearby areas in the south of the country where adverse weather conditions elevated the fire risk.
The spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew expressed solidarity on Friday with the victims of wildfires in southern Europe during prayers on a day that is also important for Orthodox Christians and known as the Dormition of the Virgin Mary.
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 health impacts and wildfires.
The burning of fossil fuels like coal, gas and coal releases heat-trapping gasses that are the primary driver of climate change.
Europe has been warming twice as fast as the global average since the 1980s, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
The EU monitoring agency says that 2024 was the hottest year on record both globally and in Europe, which experienced its second-highest number of ‘heat stress’ days.
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AP writer Derek Gatopoulos contributed from Athens.
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