By Benoit Tessier
NOISY-SUR-ECOLE, France, July 13 (Reuters) – A wildfire tore through a historic forest near Paris on Monday, forcing highway closures and mobilising water-bombing aircraft, while Spain’s death toll from one of its deadliest wildfires rose to 13, as a relentless heatwave scorched much of western Europe.
The region is enduring its third heatwave of the summer, with tinder-dry vegetation and high temperatures fuelling blazes from the Iberian Peninsula to France. Most scientists say the fires are driven by climate change.
France deployed hundreds of firefighters to tackle a fast-moving blaze that broke out alongside a motorway near Fontainebleau, home to one of France’s best-known royal palaces, which once served as a hunting lodge and autumn residence for past monarchs.
The death toll from last week’s devastating wildfire in Spain’s southern province of Almeria reached 13 after a 93-year-old British woman died from burns, with 10 people still missing as of Monday, according to authorities.
Scientists monitoring so-called excess deaths- more people dying than usual – said there were thousands more fatalities recorded than normal during a heatwave that swept through Europe and Britain at the end of June.
BLAZE IN FRANCE SUSPICIOUS, SAYS MINISTER
Just 70 kilometres (43.5 miles) from Paris, the Fontainebleau wildfire forced the closure of the A6 highway linking Paris with Lyon and the south. Smaller fires in the area also disrupted high-speed train services.
Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said the circumstances of the fire were suspicious.
“There were around ten points where the fire started within a 1,000 metre radius, which suggests it may have been started deliberately,” he said.
Some 26 million people in France were under a red heatwave warning on Monday, including the greater Paris region. Forecasters say the heatwave is expected to continue until the middle of the week.
A new heatwave, expected to last at least a week, is about to hit neighbouring Italy, bringing high humidity and tropical nights, meteorologists say. Thermometers in inland areas of Sardinia could reach 42–43 degrees Celsius (108-109 Fahrenheit) on Tuesday.
HEAT DISRUPTOR
The current bout of hot weather is the third heatwave of the year, after scorching temperatures at the end of May, then at the end of June, which broke several daily records.
Extreme weather gripping the region has damaged crops, affected power output from nuclear plants and increased freight transport costs along the Rhine river in Germany, where lower water levels have prevented cargo vessels from sailing fully loaded.
In Italy, farmers in the Emilia-Romagna region are forced to deploy more resources to ensure proper livestock management and maintain constant production of dairy products such as Parmesan cheese.
MORE DEATHS BLAMED ON HEAT
European countries reported some 10,650 excess deaths during the record-breaking heatwave that engulfed the west of the continent in late June, official data showed.
In the UK, a separate scientific study published on Monday estimated 2,700 people died from heat-related causes in England and Wales alone during the May and June heatwaves.
Of those deaths, 42% were caused by the extra heat brought on by global warming, according to findings by Imperial College London, the UK Met Office and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
Last week, the World Health Organisation warned Europe could face “more deadly weeks ahead” from new heatwaves forming over the Atlantic.
EuroMOMO, a network backed by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and the World Health Organization, said more than 9,000 of the excess deaths recorded in Europe were among people aged 65 and older.
Lasse Vestergaard, chief physician at Denmark’s Statens Serum Institut, which hosts EuroMOMO, told Reuters the numbers were highly unusual.
“It is difficult to explain this high excess mortality by anything but the extreme heat,” Vestergaard said.
(Reporting by Benoit Tessier and Sudip-Kar-Gupta in Paris, Giselda Vagnoni in Rome, Kate Abnett in Brussels, Sergio Leon and Aislinn Laing in Madrid; Writing by Richard Lough and Michele Kambas; editing by Andrei Khalip)
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