Fire Grips Fontainebleau Forest as Spain’s Wildfire Toll Reaches 13
The wildfires driven by Europe’s third heatwave burned on across the continent. In the historic Fontainebleau forest south of Paris, blazes that have destroyed more than 2,000 hectares were described as contained but not extinguished, with around 1,000 people evacuated and 850 firefighters still deployed; investigators suspect arson and have made arrests. In southern Spain, the death toll from the Almería wildfire rose to thirteen after a 93-year-old British woman died of her injuries in hospital, with around ten people still missing.
The same heat baking Britain has settled over much of western Europe, drying the land to tinder, and the sight of water-bombers over the Fontainebleau forest — deployed near Paris for the first time — is the measure of a continent stretching systems built for a cooler climate. The suspicion of arson is a reminder that many of these fires are started by human hand on ground primed to burn, whether deliberately or through carelessness. Spain’s rising toll, now including a British victim, shows the human cost accumulating as the flames reach homes and the old and infirm struggle to escape. For the many British holidaymakers heading to France and Spain this month, the fires are a direct concern, and for a country under its own amber alerts they are a glimpse of a shared future. Watch the containment of the French and Spanish fires, the final toll in Almería, and whether the heat breaks across the continent this week.