The heat wave that this week is hitting Europe and North Africa has caused hundreds of fires on both shores of the Mediterranean. Almost no country on the southern European coast is spared from the fires, which have broken out especially on the Italian island of Sicily. In addition to Italy, they burn landscapes in Greece, France, Spain, Portugal, Croatia, Turkey. And there have also been outbreaks in Albania, Kosovo, Serbia, Bulgaria or Romania, according to satellite monitoring carried out by NASA.
In the Maghreb, the fires are concentrated in Tunisia and Algeria, although the authorities of this second country assured this Wednesday that, except for one, the hundred outbreaks that emerged this week were already completely controlled.
It is precisely in Algeria where most of the 44 fatalities that were officially counted at the close of this edition have occurred due to the fires throughout the Mediterranean area. There were 34 Algerians who died, ten of them soldiers who participated in putting out the fire. Four other people were charred in Sicily, one in Tunisia and five more in Greece, including the pilot and co-pilot of the tanker that crashed on the island of Euboea while trying to put out a fire.
The anticyclone Charon has led the thermometers to mark 46 degrees in Sicily, 47 this Wednesday in Greece or 50 degrees in the shade in Algeria.
However, and although the high temperatures help the spread of the fire, many of these fires have been caused. Nineteen people have been arrested in Algeria for their alleged involvement in the start of the fires: 14 of them in Bejaia, the most affected region; three in Skikda and another two in Bouira.
In Italy, an arsonist was recorded by a drone while causing fires in a cane field in the Calabria region, where some thirty drones have been deployed as a deterrent and to identify the architects of some of the fires. The video shows a man burning several plants until he realizes that he is being recorded by a drone and tries to bring down the device by throwing stones.
"Calabria is a civilized region but it also has some imbeciles who are going to start fires in the forest like this arsonist," regional president Roberto Occhiuto said on Wednesday, after stating that the penalties for this crime can reach seven years in prison. . “He lights the fire, then he sees the drone and tries to shoot it down with rocks, but where does it come from? From the caves? ”, Added Occhiuto, of whom he assured that he has been identified and denounced.
A quick look at the NASA map shows that Sicily is tinged with red. According to Italian firefighters, since Sunday there have been 1,400 fires throughout the country and almost half have been on this island, separated by the Strait of Messina from the mainland of Calabria, where another 400 outbreaks have broken out.
In Sicily, the flames arrived on Tuesday a few meters from the runways of the Palermos airport, which was forced to close for a few hours. Some 1,500 people have had to be evacuated due to the proximity of the fire to inhabited areas.
In the case of Italy, natural catastrophes have given it no truce. Added to the fires is the strong electrical storm and the wind and hail storm that affected the north of the country on Monday night, especially in Milan, Monza and Brescia, and as a result of which two other people died, crushed by two trees.
The Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, announced this Wednesday that she will declare a state of emergency due to both the fires and the storm. “The fires and weather catastrophes of recent days have put Italy to the test. I am sincerely close to the pain of those who have lost loved ones," Meloni said.
Greece is, together with Italy, the other European country most affected by this incendiary heat wave. In addition to the Magnesia region, they have burned at least 34,000 hectares in 150 fires on the islands of Rhodes, Corfu and Euboea. After a telephone conversation, the President of Greece, Katerina Sakellaropoulou, and her Italian counterpart, Sergio Mattarella, expressed this Wednesday in a statement "their great concern about the climate emergency that is affecting the Mediterranean region with particular violence" and called for an initiative Common to southern European countries.
On the other hand, the Greek government decreed that in areas where the temperature exceeds 40 degrees, all outdoor work is prohibited from noon to five in the afternoon, with high fines for delivery services that break this rule. In addition, the Acropolis of Athens closes for tourists at 11 a.m. and reopens at 5:30 p.m.
The fires take place at the height of the tourist season. Many fires have occurred near European places that are highly visited in the summer months, such as the Greek islands, the Sicilian town of Taormina, Gran Canaria –at whose summit a fire declared on Tuesday was controlled on Wednesday–, the Portuguese city of Cascais , Dubrovnik – where the flames approached 12 kilometers from this Croatian town – or the French island of Corsica.
On the other hand, the European Union has reinforced its deployment against the fires in the Mediterranean and has already deployed 490 firefighters and nine seaplanes in Greece and Tunisia since the fires broke out.
