Native residents react in entrance of the fireplace throughout a wildfire in Santa Baia De Montes, northwestern Spain, Thursday, Aug. 14, 2025. (AP Picture)
MADRID — Firefighters in Spain, Portugal and Greece battled ongoing wildfires Friday, an vital non secular vacation in all three international locations, as persistent sizzling, dry situations challenged efforts to include the blazes.
Spain was preventing 14 main fires, in accordance with Virginia Barcones, common director of emergency companies. Temperatures had been anticipated to climb over the weekend.
“Right this moment will as soon as once more be a really robust day, with an excessive danger of recent fires,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez wrote on X.
The nationwide climate company AEMET warned of utmost fireplace danger in a lot of the nation, together with the place the most important blazes had been burning within the north and west.
A warmth wave which introduced temperatures exceeding 40 levels Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) on a number of days this month was anticipated to final by means of Monday.
Fires within the Galicia area pressured the closure of a number of highways. The excessive velocity rail line connecting it to Spain’s capital, Madrid, remained suspended.
The fires in Spain this yr have burned 158,000 hectares or 610 sq. miles, in accordance with the European Union’s European Forest Fireplace Info System. That’s an space roughly as massive as metropolitan London.
In each Spain and Portugal it was the Feast of the Assumption, a serious Catholic vacation normally marked by household gatherings and non secular processions.
In Portugal, practically 4,000 firefighters had been battling fires on Friday. Seven main fires had been energetic. Authorities prolonged the state of alert till Sunday as excessive temperatures had been anticipated to final by means of the weekend.
The Portuguese authorities on Friday requested help from the EU’s civil safety mechanism, a firefighting pressure that European international locations in want can name upon. A day earlier than, Spain acquired two Canadair water bomber plane after requesting EU assist to deal with blazes for the primary time ever.
Previously week, Greece, Bulgaria, Montenegro and Albania have requested assist from the EU’s firefighting pressure to cope with forest fires. The pressure has already been activated as many occasions this yr as all of final yr’s fireplace season.
On Friday, a wildfire in Greece burned uncontrolled for a fourth day on the island of Chios, prompting a number of extra in a single day evacuations.
Two water-dropping planes and two helicopters had been working within the north of the island within the japanese Aegean Sea, the place native authorities mentioned a lull in excessive winds was serving to firefighters early Friday.
Following a sequence of enormous fires in western Greece earlier this week, the fireplace service was on alert Friday outdoors Athens and close by areas within the south of the nation the place opposed climate situations elevated the fireplace danger.
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The religious chief of the world’s Orthodox Christians Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew expressed solidarity on Friday with the victims of wildfires in southern Europe throughout prayers for the Dormition of the Virgin Mary, an vital non secular vacation for Orthodox Christians.
