MADRID: Two men died and thousands were forced from their homes on Tuesday as wildfires fuelled by a heatwave scorched southern Europe. Heat alerts were issued in Italy, France, Spain, Portugal and the Balkans, with temperatures expected to soar above 40C.

The heatwave is another sign of climate change, which is fuelling longer, more intense and increasingly frequent bouts of extreme heat. “Thanks to climate change, we now live in a significantly warmer world,” Akshay Deoras, a research scientist at the meteorology department in Britain’s University of Reading said, adding that “many still underestimate the danger”.

An employee of a Spanish equestrian centre who suffered serious burns died in hospital as winds of up to 70 kilometres (43 miles) per hour whipped flames through Tres Cantos, a wealthy suburb north of Madrid, officials said. In Montenegro, a soldier died and another was seriously injured when their water tanker overturned while fighting wildfires in the hills north of the capital, Podgorica. A child died of heatstroke in Italy on Monday.

The equestrian centre employee was the first fatality from dozens of wildfires that have hit Spain since a heatwave began last week. Spanish media said he had become trapped by the flames as he tried to save horses.

Smoke related to forest fires since the beginning of summer is said to be the highest ever recorded

Hundreds of residents of Tres Cantos fled their homes due to the risk from the fast-moving blaze, which was contained on Tuesday morning. The fire damaged several homes and agricultural facilities, Carlos Novillo, Madrid’s regional environment chief, told reporters.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on X that rescue services “are working tirelessly to extinguish the fires” and warned: “We are at extreme risk of forest fires. Please be very cautious.”

Saved at ‘last second’

Elsewhere, about 2,000 people were evacuated from hotels and homes near the popular beaches of Tarifa in the southern region of Andalusia. The wildfire broke out near where a similar blaze forced evacuations earlier this month.

“We managed to save the residential area at the very last second,” said Antonio Sanz, the Andalusia region’s interior minister. In the northwestern region of Castile and Leon, dozens of blazes were reported, including one threatening Las Medulas, a Unesco World Heritage site known for its ancient Roman gold mines.

The head of the regional government of Castile and Leon, Alfonso Fernandez Manueco, vowed “to act quickly and generously” once the fire is over to restore the site “to its full glory as soon as possible”.

In neighbouring Portugal, firefighters battled three large wildfires, with the most serious near Trancoso in the centre of the country.

More than 700 firefighters were deployed there. Church bells rang out on Tuesday morning in Mendo Gordo, a hamlet near Trancoso, to sound the alarm as a thick column of smoke rose in the distance, images broadcast on Portuguese television showed.

Smoke and greenhouse gas emissions related to forest fires since the beginning of summer in the Northern Hemisphere are among the highest ever recorded, according to the EU climate monitor Copernicus.

Temperature records were broken at four weather stations in southern France on Monday and three-quarters of the country was under heat alerts on Tuesday, with temperatures forecast to top 40C in the Rhone Valley. The Rhone department banned outdoor public events.

Published in Dawn, August 13th, 2025