Europe’s heat wave: Greek wildfires force hundreds to flee as temperatures rise

Hundreds of people have been evacuated as wildfires rage in Greece, and Southern Europe faces another week of sweltering, above-40C temperatures in a heat wave that experts say is linked to climate change.

“In the last 48 hours our country has been confronted with more than 123 forest fires,” a spokesman for the fire service told Greek media on Wednesday, as several towns across the country were evacuated.

On Tuesday, 1,200 children were evacuated from a summer camp in Loutraki, a coastal town west of Athens, fleeing a nearby blaze.

“[Tuesday] was the first really tough day of this summer,” Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in a statement while on a trip to Brussels, which he was forced to cut short on Tuesday afternoon because of the wildfires at home.

“It is certain that more will follow. We’ve had, we have and will have fires, which is also one of the results of the climate crisis that we experience with increased intensity,” Mitsotakis said.

“These types of events are very concerning,” the World Meteorological Organization said in a statement Tuesday, warning the northern hemisphere faced “a summer of extremes.” Experts say that major heat waves, which have “increased sixfold since the 1980s” according to the WMO, are tied to climate change.

“The warmer the global average temperature, the more intense — and thus longer — heatwaves become,” said Karsten Haustein, a climate scientist at Germany’s Climate Service Center, in an emailed statement on Tuesday.

In Spain, the region of Catalonia had its highest temperature on record on Tuesday afternoon, reaching 45.3C in the town of Figueres, data from the World Meteorological Organization showed, while the thermometer went above 45C in Sicily, reaching 46.3C in the city of Licata.

The all-time temperature record for continental Europe is 48.8°C, measured in Sicily on August 11, 2021.

Several temperature records were also broken locally in southeastern France and in the French Pyrenees, MeteoFrance announced Tuesday.

The Mediterranean Sea reached 29.2C on Tuesday near the French city of Nice, the highest-ever level recorded there, according to local media reports.

Nektaria Stamouli, Karl Mathiesen and Laura Hülsemann contributed reporting.