Spain battles 20 major wildfires, hundreds flee Gallipoli

VILLARDEVÓS/ISTANBUL: Scorching heat hampered efforts to contain 20 major wildfires across Spain on Sunday, prompting the government to deploy an additional 500 troops from the military emergency unit to support firefighting operations.

And Turkiye, seven villages Gallipoli peninsula flanking the Dardanelles Strait were evacuated as firefighters battled a raging wildfire propelled by high winds, officials said.

In the northwestern region of Galicia, several fires have converged to form a large blaze, forcing the closure of highways and rail services to the region.

Southern Europe is experiencing one of its worst wildfire seasons in two decades, with Spain among the hardest-hit countries.

Read more: Wildfires in Balkans as Europe grapples with heatwaves

In the past week alone, fires there have claimed three lives and burned more than 115,000 hectares, while neighbouring Portugal also battles widespread blazes.

Temperatures are expected to reach up to 45 degrees Celsius (113 Fahrenheit) in some areas on Sunday, Spanish national weather agency AEMET said.

“There are still some challenging days ahead and, unfortunately, the weather is not on our side,” Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez told a news conference in Ourense, one of the most affected areas.

He announced an increase in military reinforcements, bringing the total number of troops deployed across Spain to 1,900.

Virginia Barcones, director general of emergency services, told Spanish public TV temperatures were expected to drop from Tuesday, but for now the weather conditions were “very adverse”.

“Today there are extremely high temperatures with an extreme risk of fires, which complicates the firefighting efforts,” Barcones said.

Read more: Climate change: Over half of Europe, Mediterranean basin hit by drought

VILLAGERS RESORT TO BUCKETS

In the village of Villardevos in Galicia, desperate neighbours have organised to fight the flames on their own with water buckets as the area was left without electricity to power water pumps.

“The fireplanes come in from all sides, but they don’t come here,” Basilio Rodriguez, a resident, told Reuters on Saturday. Added Lorea Pascual, another local resident: “It’s insurmountable, it couldn’t be worse”.

Read more: Mediterranean faces rapid tropicalisation, waters reach 32C

Interior ministry data show 27 people have been arrested and 92 were under investigation for suspected arson since June.

In neighbouring Portugal, wildfires have burnt some 155,000 hectares of vegetation so far this year, according to provisional data from the ICNF forestry protection institute — three times the average for this period between 2006 to 2024. About half of that area burned just in the past three days.

Thousands of firefighters were battling eight large blazes in central and northern Portugal, the largest of them near Piodao, a scenic, mountainous area popular with tourists.

Another blaze in Trancoso, further north, has now been raging for eight days. A smaller fire a few miles east claimed a local resident’s life on Friday – the first this season.

FIRE ALONG THE SEA

The fire began on Saturday in the northwestern province of Canakkale, spreading quickly in the hills near the town of Gelibolu, on the shores of the busy shipping strait.

Overnight, some 250 residents were evacuated from five villages, with two more emptied on Sunday, Canakkale governor Omer Toraman wrote on X, without giving a total number of people affected.

“So far, the fire has not spread to the evacuated areas,” he wrote, also saying that war cemeteries in the peninsula had “not been affected” by the blaze.

The province — popular with tourists visiting the ancient ruins of Troy and the Gallipoli battleground where thousands of soldiers died in World War I — had suffered “extremely severe drought” in the past year, he said.

Agriculture Minister Ibrahim Yumakli said on X that 12 planes and 18 helicopters were fighting the flames alongside 343 vehicles on the ground in an operation involving 1,300 people.

STRONG WINDS

While the weather has been fairly normal for the time of year, much of northwestern Turkey has suffered strong winds in recent days, although they eased off on Sunday, meaning efforts to fight the blaze were “progressing more positively”, he added.

Access to historical sites near the town of Eceabat were closed “due to the ongoing forest fire”, the institution running war memorials said on X.

On Monday, more than 2,000 people fled another fire on the southern side of the strait, and last week a wildfire forced the suspension of shipping through the Dardanelles Strait, which links the Mediterranean with the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea.

According to the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) website, there have been 192 wildfires in Turkey this year, which have ravaged more than 110,373 hectares (273,000 acres) of land.

Experts say human-driven climate change is causing more frequent and more intense wildfires and other natural disasters, and have warned Turkey to take measures to tackle the problem.