By Yves Herman and Javi West Larrañaga
BORDEAUX, France/ONDA, Spain, July 28 (Reuters) - Firefighters raced on Tuesday to subdue huge wildfires that have forced unprecedented evacuations of tens of thousands of people across France and Spain, as Western Europe braced for another heatwave.
The fires have torn through a region already battered by a blisteringly hot and dry summer. Crews were seeking to capitalise on more favourable weather before a new wave of higher temperatures settled in from Wednesday.
In the Bordeaux region of France, firefighters contained the forest blaze overnight, while in Spain, authorities allowed most people in the central Toledo province to return to their homes, lifting a state of emergency introduced on July 23. Fires still raged in the Madrid region nearby.
“We are starting to see the end of the tunnel in the fight against these fires," Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez told reporters.
Europe, the world's fastest warming continent, has endured record-breaking heatwaves this year. Scientists say human-driven climate change is intensifying the heat and drought that allow wildfires to spread faster, burn longer and become more destructive. Sanchez said that ignoring this fact made people even more vulnerable to these changes.
In France, the mood was sombre as fires ravaged the Cap Ferret peninsula on the Atlantic coast, a popular tourist destination, and spread through areas surrounding Bordeaux in previous days. President Emmanuel Macron called the wildfire crisis possibly the most severe the country has faced since World War Two.
BRACING FOR NEW HEATWAVE
Local authorities at Nouvelle-Aquitaine and Gironde, which covers the Bordeaux area, said on X the fire had been contained on Tuesday after some flare-ups, but weather forecasts were unfavourable.
Spanish authorities on Tuesday further scaled back emergency measures linked to the wildfires, allowing residents to return to 13 municipalities and affected areas in the Madrid region and Avila province.
A woman who had been hospitalised in a critical condition after suffering severe burns in a wildfire near Almeria in southern Spain on July 9 has died, health authorities said, bringing the death toll from that blaze to 14.
MONSTER STORMS
Large wildfires, such as in Gironde, are capable of creating their own microclimate, with rising heat and smoke forming towering storm clouds. These clouds can sometimes produce strong winds and lightning, which can stoke new fires. The phenomenon, known as a pyrocumulonimbus, has been observed in several countries that experience major wildfires, including Australia and Canada.
"We fight against a monster," said French firefighters' association spokesperson Eric Brocardi, adding that such phenomena were likely to become more frequent.
According to the Reuters Climate Monitor, temperatures in Bordeaux were forecast to hit 33 degrees Celsius (91.4 degrees Fahrenheit) on Tuesday, 7.1 C higher than the daily average in 1961 to 1990, while the Madrid region's 37 C would be 5.5 C above average.
Meteo France expected the heat to peak on Wednesday, when temperatures in Paris could hit 38 C, but added that the duration of the heatwave "will be determined in the coming days".
More frequent and intense heatwaves are causing thousands of excess deaths and increasingly disrupting everyday life, from snarling road and rail travel to hindering river shipping. A passenger ship ran aground overnight on the Danube in Bulgaria because of low water levels, authorities there said.
RESIDENTS DESCRIBE 'RED HELL'
Other EU members and Turkey sent waterbombing aircraft to both Spain and France. Sweden, Portugal, Switzerland and Serbia also deployed ground teams.
But the intensity and duration of the fires have raised questions about the availability of resources.
Avincis, Europe's largest aerial emergency services firm, has warned that Europe is not ready for longer and more extreme wildfire seasons, as its firefighting aircraft were now needed almost year-round.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said emergency support services were coming under increasing strain in Spain and France as evacuations continued.
"This is the pattern we are seeing more and more across Europe: heatwaves, drought and wildfires feeding into one another, and communities bearing the consequences,” said Maria Alcazar Castilla, IFRC deputy regional director for Europe, calling for investment in preparedness and climate adaptation.
For those caught in the fire's path, escape often came down to grabbing relatives and pets, and leaving everything else behind.
Spanish evacuee Jose Miguel Encinas, 53, in La Vall d'Uixo in eastern Spain recalled scenes of "total chaos".
"It was like in the movies where hell cracked the ground open, and you see the red hell."
(Reporting by Yves Herman, Janis Laizans, Clotaire Achi, Lauren Bacquie, Sarah Meyssonnier, Manuel Ausloos, Inti Landauro, Sudip Kar-Gupta, Kate Abnett, Javi West Larrañaga, Emma Pinedo, Victoria Waldersee, Eva Manez, Leonardo Benassatto and Emma Farge, Writing by Michele Kambas, editing by Andrei Khalip)
