Firefighting planes from Greece and Sweden will arrive in France on Thursday, while other EU governments including Germany, Poland, Austria and Romania are also mobilizing resources to help France fight forest fires, the government announced french
“Today we benefit fully from European solidarity,” Borne told reporters during a visit to the town of Hostens, at the heart of the fires in the Gironde region of southwestern France. More than half of this year’s fires have occurred in Gironde.
A total of four planes from Greece and Sweden are expected to arrive in France today, as well as a team of 64 people and 24 vehicles from Germany, according to the Elysée Palace.
The Gironde fires have burned more than 6,800 hectares of forest, and nearly 1,100 firefighters are involved with more on the way. As of Thursday morning, 10,000 people have been evacuated from the area, according to the regional authority.
“Conditions are particularly challenging: vegetation and soil are particularly dry after more than a month without rain. Scorching temperatures (40°C today) (104°F) are expected to continue through Saturday and combine with air very dry to create very serious fire risk conditions,” according to the statement.
Forest fires in France have been particularly violent this summer, ravaging the south and south-west of the country, while they have also broken out in the Normandy and Brittany regions, further north than usual.
Fires have burned 41,400 hectares in France since June 10, a huge increase compared to the 2,040 hectares lost in the same period last year, the press office of the ministry’s civil security department told CNN of the French Interior.
Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom also suffer
In Italy, farmers in some parts of the country have lost up to 80% of their harvest this year due to severe weather anomalies, agricultural association Coldretti said on Thursday.
The drought has meant that the soil has not been able to absorb any rain from recent storms, causing flooding and landslides, according to Coldretti.
The hailstorm was “the most serious climatic event due to the irreversible damage it caused to crops”, says the association, which adds that “in a few minutes it is capable of destroying the work of an entire year”.
The agricultural association estimates that the damage exceeds 6 billion euros ($6.2 billion), equivalent to 10% of Italy’s annual agricultural production.
Elsewhere in the Mediterranean, the Spanish weather agency AEMET has warned of high temperatures across Spain as the heat wave continues in the peninsula.
This Thursday there are heat warnings in different parts of the country, with the highest concentration of communities affected in the regions of northeastern Spain near the border with France.
Temperatures are expected to rise to 40ºC, according to AEMET.
Most parts of the country are covered by heat warnings for Friday and maximum temperatures above 40C are expected in north-east and south Spain.
The UK is also suffering another week of high temperatures, with the Met Office issuing an “amber extreme heat warning” on Tuesday.
“The extreme heat warning, which covers much of the southern half of England as well as parts of east Wales, will be in place from Thursday until late Sunday with possible impacts on health, transport and infrastructure,” the Met Office said. in a statement.
Temperatures are expected to peak on Friday and Saturday and are “likely” to reach 30 degrees Celsius (between 86 and 95 degrees Fahrenheit), the statement said.
CNN’s Pierre Bairin, Amandine Hess, Xiaofei Xu, Jorge Engels, Benjamin Brown and Nicola Ruotolo contributed to this report.