Southern Europe is literally crushed by the heat. Greece and Spain are still, on this Tuesday, July 25, in the grip of the heat wave and the fires which are disrupting the tourist season. Several victims and many damages are to be deplored. The Express make the point.
In Greece, a water bomber crashes
A Canadair-type water bomber with two pilots on board crashed on Tuesday while battling a forest fire in Greece, in the south of the island of Euboea, said Yannis Artopios, spokesman for the fire department.
“A Greek Canadair plane with at least two people on board crashed near Platanisto (village in Euboea),” said the spokesperson. According to initial information from the authorities, the aircraft, which was participating with at least three other planes and a hundred firefighters in the fight against the flames on this island near Athens, crashed in a ravine. The accident occurred on the heights of Karystos where a fire started on Sunday.
The two pilots belong to the Greek Air Force, according to information from the Ministry of Defense, quoted by public television Ert.
Devastating fires in Greece
Two other major fires are active in Greece on the tourist islands of Rhodes in the Aegean Sea (southeast) and Corfu in the Ionian Sea (northwest). “Fighting the fires will always be difficult because we are living the repercussions of the climate crisis,” Greek Prime Minister Kyriacos Mitsotakis said on Tuesday. “We have a difficult summer ahead of us,” he warned during a council of ministers, the start of which was broadcast live by public television.
In Athens, which has been suffocating for more than a week, the thermometer should climb to 41°C and in the center of the country, temperatures of a maximum of 44°C are expected, according to the national weather forecast EMY. The country, though accustomed to summer heat waves, is experiencing one of the longest heat waves in recent years, according to EMY experts. Gythio, in the Peloponnese peninsula (southwest), recorded a peak on Sunday at 46.4°.
Greece: fires in Athens, Rhodes and Corfu
© / afp.com/Valentin RAKOVSKY, Jan MROZINSKI
The very high temperatures combined with strong winds sometimes going up to 60 km / hour in the Aegean Sea have caused major fires for eight days, which however have not caused any casualties at this stage.
According to estimates by the Greek section of the NGO WWF, 35,000 hectares of forest and vegetation have been destroyed so far in this eastern Mediterranean country.
A hundred kilometers from Athens, the south of the large island of Evia is also partly ravaged by flames, two years after devastating fires in the north. A fourth fire front worries firefighters near Aigio, in the western Peloponnese.
In Rhodes, where an unprecedented evacuation operation of some 30,000 tourists and residents took place last weekend, more than 266 firefighters are still trying to contain the ongoing fire for the eighth day, according to firefighters. At the other end of the country, in northern Corfu, where around 2,500 people had to leave their homes as a preventive measure overnight from Sunday to Monday, 62 firefighters, a helicopter and two water bombers are fighting the fire, according to firefighters.
Satellite image released on July 24, 2023 by Maxar Technologies of a forest fire near Gennadi, on the island of Rhodes, Greece
© / afp.com/Handout
Near the town of Karystos in southern Evia, 93 firefighters and two water bombers are hard at work.
In northern Italy, thunderstorms that killed two people
Violent thunderstorms hit northern Italy where two women were killed, the head of government Giorgia Meloni announced on Tuesday. “It is with great sadness that I learned the tragic news of two accidents caused by bad weather in which a 16-year-old girl was killed in a scout camp in Brescia (north) and a woman in Lissone (north) by falling trees”, wrote the head of government Giorgia Meloni in a message on Twitter, renamed X.
Violent winds, heavy rain and hail battered Milan, the economic capital of the country, at dawn on Tuesday, flooding the streets and uprooting trees, many of which fell on the road.
The local public transport company deplored serious damage to the electricity network, while an AFP journalist noted a temporary water cut in the historic center of the city.
Heat wave around the Mediterranean.
© / AFP
In southern Italy, violent fires
Along with these bad weather hitting the north of the peninsula, the south is affected by a heat wave with a temperature of 47.6 ° C recorded Monday in Catania, Sicily, according to local Civil Protection.
Sicilian firefighters also fought overnight from Monday to Tuesday against several fires, one of which happened near Palermo airport, which was closed for several hours in the morning.
Rail transport is also affected by these fires. “We are living in Italy one of the most complicated days of the last decades: floods, tornadoes and giant hail in the north, scorching heat and devastating fires in the south,” Civil Protection Minister Nello Musumeci wrote on Facebook on Tuesday.
“The climatic upheaval that is affecting our country imposes on all of us, without any alibi for anyone, a change of attitude”, added the minister.