Wreckage from a firefighting helicopter that crashed after colliding with another helicopter during a wildfire operation near Psatha, Greece, on Sunday.
Under French rules, homeowners must clear vegetation within roughly 50 yards of their houses. In the forests affected by France’s worst fire in decades, that didn’t happen.
Residents in Bordeaux in southwestern France are doing everything in their power to stop a wildfire that’s been burning for more than a week. The flames are too spread out for professional firefighters to be everywhere, so for now, civilian volunteers are the only thing standing between the fire and a major French city.
Greece also worked to contain blazes on Lesbos and in the Peloponnese, where another firefighter died, in the midst of a brutal wildfire season for Europe.
Firefighters have contained vast wildfires in both countries, but winds are high and temperatures rising. Spain’s prime minister said the next 12 hours would be “decisive.”
Officials said they had contained the spread of vast fires in both countries, but warned that rising temperatures and high winds meant the situation was still fluid.
The continent is experiencing some of its biggest fires and highest temperatures ever. Residents are fleeing, leaders are struggling to respond and “it will get worse,” one climate expert said.
Faced with massive blazes, firefighters in both countries are using a brief window of opportunity to bring the flames under control before temperatures spike.
With firefighters stretched thin, volunteers put themselves at risk, using water tanks, hoses and tractors to hold back flames from villages and farms in southwestern France.
While Mark Carney weighs his next steps, some provincial leaders point to oil, electricity and potash as powerful leverage against U.S. economic pressure.
Hundreds of thousands of people in France and Spain have been forced to evacuate from huge blazes fueled by soaring temperatures and tinder-dry conditions.
Residents of northwestern Ontario say their warnings about fires they spotted were dismissed and official information as the flames spread often didn’t come at all.
Swaths of burned forest from the Dryden 35 Wildfire, part of a series of wildfires that forced many to flee their homes in Northwestern Ontario this month.
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