In Spain, wildfires west of Madrid have forced about 60,000 people to evacuate.
At an emergency shelter outside the capital, displaced residents rested on camp beds, comforted pets and waited anxiously for news of their homes.
Maria Angeles Canete fought back tears as she described returning to the ruins of her campsite near Navaluenga.
“We lost everything,” she said. “We had this campsite, we had another one, and we’ve lost it all. We have nothing.”
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EU reinforces response as climate concerns grow
The European Union announced on Monday that it was deploying additional water-bombing aircraft to France, adding to those already assisting Spain.
But EU Commissioner Hadja Lahbib warned the bloc’s firefighting fleet was under increasing strain as extreme fire conditions spread across Europe.
“Extreme conditions are looming for Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, in addition to France and the Iberian Peninsula, where the situation is expected to worsen, including in Portugal starting today,” Lahbib told AFP.
The destruction has been extensive in the hardest-hit parts of Spain, where AFP reporters saw charred forests, blackened tree trunks and burned-out homes and vehicles.
“You run to save what you can and then you turn to defend,” said Karim Benali, a volunteer firefighter near Navaluenga.
Spain has seen about 77,000 hectares of land destroyed by wildfires, while David Sanchez, who returned to his home in Cebreros after evacuating at the weekend, found his olive and pistachio grove reduced to ash.
“Now it’s time to clean up and plant again… and the fire has flared up again down there,” he said.
Since the start of the year, wildfires have burned around 150,000 hectares in Spain and 115,000 hectares in France.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has described the fires as “the most painful expression of a climate emergency.”
Spain’s weather agency AEMET said another heatwave would begin on Wednesday and last until the end of the week, with temperatures expected to reach 42°C in the northeast and 39°C in central parts of the country.
France’s national weather service, Meteo-France, also forecast temperatures of up to 40°C from Tuesday, accompanied by dry winds expected to worsen fire conditions.
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