Firefighters battle blazes in southern France after European heatwave

By Manon Cruz

LANCON, France, July 2 (Reuters) – Two thousand firefighters were battling several wildfires fanned by strong winds along France’s Mediterranean coast on Thursday, as the region grappled with parched conditions following Europe’s recent heatwave.

Television images showed warehouses and a yacht ablaze in a marina in the town of Canet-en-Roussillon, near the Spanish border, as a thick cloud of dark smoke blew over the beach.

Local authorities said 1,500 people had been evacuated from the town’s campsites and the airport in nearby Perpignan was closed.

Earlier in the day, firefighters brought two fires under control on the outskirts of Marseille, France’s second-biggest city, but were struggling to contain another bigger blaze in the Aude administrative department.

Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu, whose minority government faces a no-confidence vote in parliament on Monday over its handling of the heatwave, held a crisis meeting in Marseille. France’s weather office has warned that another spell of extreme heat could hit next week.

Lecornu said that 8,700 hectares had burned in France so far this season, including 1,200 on Wednesday alone.

WARNING ABOUT WILDFIRE RISK

The World Meteorological Organization last week warned that the record temperatures that baked Western Europe for over a week in late June would worsen the risk of wildfires, given the outlook for sustained high temperatures, very low humidity and dry vegetation.

In Canet-en-Roussillon, four helicopters were deployed to help tackle the blaze and three Canadair firefighting planes were on standby.

“Our main concern is the industrial zone, where many industrial buildings are located. Some contain potentially polluting substances and flammable materials,” Pierre Regnault de la Mothe, the top official in the Pyrenees-Orientales department, told reporters.

To the east, the fire in the Aude scorched some 900 hectares as winds reaching 70 kilometres per hour complicated the efforts of nearly 700 firefighters.

Health authorities estimate the previous heatwave may have caused at least 1,000 excess deaths in the country during record-breaking temperatures.

(Reporting by Manon Cruz, Alessandro Parodi, Dominique Vidalon and Makini Brice; Writing by Charlotte Van Campenhout and Richard Lough; Editing by Timothy Heritage, Aidan Lewis)