The heatwave and fires continue to affect several countries

The heatwave and fires continue to cause damage in all corners of the world. In Greece, the troubles are back. Large forest and bushfires are raging in northeastern Greece amid high temperatures, strong winds and weeks of drought. The flames reached villages in the region of the port city of Alexandroupolis on Sunday, destroying several houses and agricultural lands, local authorities announced. The fires broke out on Saturday. Firefighters deployed firefighting planes and helicopters to douse the blaze early Sunday, fire officials said. "It was a very hard night," the mayor of Alexandroupolis, Giannis Zamboukis, said on state radio. He specified that eight villages near the city were evacuated. Four people were taken to hospital with breathing problems, he added. The tourist attractions are not in danger, he mentioned. It is not clear what caused the fires to break out, but they spread quickly, fanned by strong winds and amid a prolonged drought. In total, 46 forest and bush fires broke out nationwide on Saturday, the fire department said. The Greek civil service published a map on Sunday showing that the second-highest fire danger level applies to large parts of Greece. Temperatures of around 39 degrees Celsius are expected to prevail in mainland Greece in the coming days, according to the meteorological office.

A "heat storm" will affect Italy until Thursday, forecasting record temperatures especially in the center and north of the country, but also in the high mountain regions, meteorologists announced, reports ANSA. A red heat code is in effect from Sunday in eight Italian cities - Rome, Florence, Bologna, Perugia, Brescia, Bolzano, Latina and Rieti. According to this warning, even people in good physical shape or young people are advised to avoid the sun between 10:00 and 18:00. A yellow code of unfavorable weather conditions is, however, in force in Calabria, Basilicata and Sicily, where strong storms are expected.

Spain is not doing very well from this point of view either. Violent winds and high temperatures have once again made it difficult for firefighters to fight the fire on the tourist island of Tenerife, in the Spanish Canary archipelago, the worst in the region's history. "It is a devastating fire, a fire of a completely different scale, a scale that the Canary Islands have never known," said the head of the government of Tenerife, Rosa Davila. The fire, active on a perimeter of 70 kilometers, has so far devastated 8,400 hectares, over 4% of the total surface of the island. On Saturday evening, the president of the regional government of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, reported that "a total of 12,279 people" had been evacuated, citing figures from the Civil Defense. A few hours before, the emergency services had reported on the social network X (formerly Twitter) "provisional estimates suggesting that more than 26,000 people have been evacuated". The regional authorities, who sent this figure, explained that it is based "on census figures" from the areas subject to evacuation orders. Strong gusts of wind and temperatures higher than expected during the night of Friday to Saturday facilitated the spread of the fire that broke out last week, in a mountainous area in the northeast of the island. The fire has so far affected eleven municipalities in Tenerife, the largest island in the Canary archipelago, which covers a total of 203,400 hectares.

The island has been affected by larger fires in terms of surface area burned, notably in 2007, but its weather conditions and topography led Clavijo to say the archipelago was facing the "most complicated" fire on record in recent years. 40 years.

Approximately 30,000 people were ordered to evacuate in western Canada, where firefighters continued to fight fires of rare intensity and which will have lasting consequences, reports AFP. "The situation is very unstable and the numbers are constantly changing, but at this stage approximately 30,000 people have been ordered to evacuate and another 36,000 have been placed on alert for a possible evacuation," said Bowinn Ma, responsible for emergency situations in the province of British Columbia, in western Canada. "We insist on the absolute importance of immediately following evacuation orders," she emphasized in a press conference. "It's a matter of life and death for the people who are in these properties, but also for the relief teams who sometimes have to come back and ask people to leave," she explained. The Premier of the Canadian province of British Columbia, David Eby, presented the figures lightly different: 35,000 people have received an evacuation order and another 30,000 are preparing for a possible evacuation. Canada has been struggling for several months with forest and vegetation fires in various regions. They are an annual phenomenon in certain Canadian regions and can cause evacuations.