Wildfires have been extinguished in Spain, France, Portugal and Greece, among others.
Extinguishing the forest fires in southern Europe will take days, if not even weeks, according to the chief rescue inspector of the Ministry of the Interior Rami Ruuska.
Wildfires have been extinguished in Spain, France, Portugal and Greece, among others. In France, for example, thousands of people have been evacuated due to wildfires in the southwestern part of the country. A total of more than 8,000 people were evacuated on Monday from the wildfires that started last week in the Gironde region. Wildfires have been reported in La Teste-de-Buch, among others. A fire has destroyed thousands of hectares of forest in France.
In Spain, wildfires have been extinguished, for example, in the Malaga region, popular with tourists.
According to Copernicus, the European Union’s emergency management service, a large part of southern Europe is at extreme risk of forest fires.
Very hot air has been predicted for southern Europe this week as well. According to Ruuska, the weather does not make the work of the rescue authorities any easier.
– The firefighting teams are hard with the heat. The area is warm and dry, and the wind is spreading the fire forward. Extinguishing can take days or weeks, it depends on the conditions, says Ruuska, who has followed European forest fires through the media.
In Spain, for example, attempts have been made to bring fires under control by, among other things, dropping water on them from helicopters. A constant stream of helicopters went from the fire places to the sea to collect water in order to bring down the sea of flames.
Aerial firefighting is done with helicopters and aerial firefighting machines, but mainly forest and terrain fires are extinguished from the ground, says Ruuska. Extinguishing work is mainly done during the day, because the darkness hinders the work at night.
– If the fires spread to a populated area, it increases the difficulty factor even more. Then there will also be rescue missions and evacuating a large number of people is a merciless job, says Ruuska.
According to Ruuska, there are wildfires every year in different parts of Europe, but a situation where there are so many fires in different parts of Southern Europe does not happen every year, according to him.
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