Heatwave turns southeastern Europe into tinderbox as Wildfires rage
Pastor Dale Morgan
Heatwave turns southeastern Europe into tinderbox as Wildfires rage*
ROME, July 25 (AFP) Jul 25, 2007
Southeastern Europe was a tinderbox Wednesday in the grip of an
unrelenting heatwave that has claimed hundreds of lives as wildfires
swept Italy and bit into a national park in Slovakia.
Italy was sweltering under temperatures close to 40 degrees Celsius (104
Fahrenheit) in places Wednesday and suffering devastating wildfires in
central and southern regions.
"We've had 85 calls so far already for airborne intervention against
fires," a public safety official told AFP in the afternoon as fires
raged in the Abruzzo, Latium, Calabria, Sicily and Sardinia regions.
More than 5,000 hectares (12,500 acres) of farmland have been destroyed,
worth some one billion euros (1.4 billion dollars), according to the
Italian Farmers Confederation.
In southeastern Apulia on Tuesday, two people were burned alive in their
car near the Adriatic coastal town of Peschici, while on Monday a pilot
died when his Canadair plane crashed while he was fighting a fire in
mountainous Abruzzo.
"The alert remains high across the country," fire services spokesman
Luca Cari told AFP earlier. "We have doubled the personnel rotations to
ensure a stronger presence ... and we have transferred personnel from
the north of the country to the south to help us."
In Romania authorities said the heatwave-related death toll rose to 33
with three more people succumbing on Tuesday.
In the capital Bucharest where temperatures reached 37 degrees Celsius
(99 Fahrenheit) more than 170 people fainted in the street. Ambulance
services received a record of more than 1,200 calls over the past 24
hours, according to the Mediafax news agency.
Power flickered on and off in Bucharest where air conditioners were
working overtime.
Some 30 people died in a heatwave last month in Romania.
In Slovakia a lightning strike sparked a huge forest fire on Sunday that
was still raging across about 10 hectares of the Slovensky Raj
(Slovakian Paradise) national park in the east of the country.
Meanwhile the mercury reached 46 degrees Celsius (115 F) in parts of
Greece, where a dozen forest fires were burning and up to five people
have died from heat-related causes since Monday.
Authorities set up air-conditioned shelters in Athens and Greece's
second largest city Salonika, while fire forced the evacuation of a
monastery, a village and a summer camp near the southern town of Aigion.
Another fire on the Ionian island of Kefalonia threatened some nearby
towns, firefighters said.
Greeks were warned to stay indoors and help conserve electricity between
11:00 am and 3:00 pm to prevent power outages.
"Until (Wednesday evening) when the heatwave passes, we ask for
restraint," Interior Minister Prokopis Pavlopoulos said, adding: "We
don't need to have the air-conditioning on all day long."
The heatwave caused a spike in smog pollution in Athens, with ozone
levels above emergency limits in several districts, prompting the
government to urge motorists to avoid the city centre. Ozone levels were
not expected to improve on Thursday.
The fire department said 99 blazes had broken out around Greece since
Tuesday, added to hundreds of fires that have burned thousands of
hectares of forest and agricultural land since a first heat wave last month.
Temperatures in Greece were expected to drop slightly over the next two
days.
Hungary, where up to 500 people may have died last week from
heat-related causes, enjoyed a significant drop in temperatures
overnight with the welcome arrival of a cool front.
Highs on Wednesday did not exceed 28 degrees Celsius (83 F), down from
nearly 40 degrees Celsius (104 F) on Tuesday.
A third degree heat alert -- the highest ever applied in the country
before last week -- ended on Tuesday.
On the western edge of Europe, even without a heatwave Portuguese
firefighters are battling blazes near Abrantes, about 100 kilometres (60
miles) north of Lisbon, and in the Caldeirao mountains in the south.
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