By Antonio Bronic
OMIS, Croatia, Aug 14 (Reuters) – A wildfire engulfed homes in a picturesque Croatian resort overnight, killing one person, injuring 40 and forcing 1,200 to evacuate, officials said, as the EU warned that pockets of “very extreme” wildfire conditions stretched across the continent.
Hundreds more were evacuated from a beach resort in northern Greece and from a village in southwest France, while a major grass fire engulfed houses in England, officials said.
Record-breaking heat and drought that scientists link to climate change have created ideal conditions for wildfires across Europe this summer, especially in France, Spain and Greece. The Balkans region has also endured several heatwaves.
FLAMES TURN NIGHT SKY RED
Local residents and tourists described scenes of chaos as they fled in their cars from a fire outside Omis, a scenic town on Croatia’s prized Dalmatian coast surrounded by trees and rocky hills.
“The flames were licking both sides of the road. When I got a little further around the bend and looked, I saw flames shooting up from under my hood. The car was on fire!” said local resident Ljubica Uglesic.
The fire, which turned the night sky red, appeared to have calmed on Friday morning, said Chief Fire Commander Slavko Tucakovic.
Authorities found one charred body while, of 40 people treated in the nearby hospital in Split, seven were in a serious condition, the hospital said.
DINGHIES HELP IN RESCUE FROM GREEK SEASIDE TOWN
In northern Greece, people wearing face masks, some clutching children or pets, boarded dinghies and boats in the seaside town of Siviri as the fire devoured a forest and columns of smoke turned the cloudless sky a dark grey.
The coastguard said that more than 300 people had been evacuated by boat from the town, which sits on a peninsula of woodland, olive groves and beaches south of Greece’s second city, Thessaloniki.
More than 140 firefighters, nine aircraft and seven helicopters were deployed to battle flames, while fishing vessels took part in the evacuation.
Wildfires in Britain and Wales have hit a record level for a second consecutive year, fuelled by five heatwaves this summer, Phil Garrigan, chair of the National Fire Chiefs Council, told Reuters on Friday.
“We’re anticipating this being not just a record-breaking year, but a considerable increase on the number of wildfires previously experienced,” Garrigan said.
Simon Markey was playing golf in Stourbridge, in central England, when he saw a fire start in a field nearby and spread quickly across the golf course despite efforts by firefighters to contain it.
It reached an area of houses, said local resident Paul Nash, whose neighbour’s house burned down.
“I heard a scream, and all the trees along the railway track were exploding. They weren’t just setting fire, they were exploding. So we just grabbed everything and left,” Nash said.
In France, authorities evacuated 525 people from the village of Luglon after a wildfire broke out in the southwestern Landes region, not far from an area already devastated by major blazes this summer.
Rescue services in Spain late on Thursday launched an operation to remove the remains of three kings who ruled the Aragón region in the 11th century from a monastery threatened by a wildfire.
An even larger fire in Huelva, in southern Spain, has burned 31,000 hectares so far and forced the evacuation of 700 people.
Firefighting planes in Spain have clocked more than 8,200 hours flying time so far this year, exceeding the number of hours flown in 2025, when a record 393,000 hectares of land burned, Spain’s Environment Minister Sara Aagesen said on Bluesky.
‘VERY EXTREME’ WILDFIRE CONDITIONS ACROSS EUROPE
The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service warned of “very extreme” conditions across a large area of central and eastern Europe, with additional pockets over southern Britain, Ireland, northern France and southern Sweden, in its outlook for the week to August 19.
The average high across Western Europe on Friday was forecast to be 31.2 degrees Celsius (88 degrees Fahrenheit), which is 8 C (14 F) above what was typical from 1961 to 1990, data from the Reuters Climate Monitor showed. The temperature for Europe as a whole was 1.6 C (2.9 F) above the 1961-1990 average, it said.
The hot, dry summer is also taking a heavy toll on agriculture. Relentless heat and drought could halve this year’s French maize harvest and reduce European Union production to its smallest in decades, according to analysts.
(Reporting by Alexandros Litsardakis and Antonis Pothitos in Greece, Daria Sito-Sucic in Bosnia and Herzegovina, William James in Britain, Stephanie Lecocq and Gus Trompiz in France, Joan Faus in Spain; Writing by Conor Humphries and Charlie Devereux; Editing by Alex Richardson, William Maclean)
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