LONDON — Some European nations were still grappling with their worst wildfires in decades on Wednesday, as Britain woke with relief after its hottest day on record. Flames have torn through tinder bushes in an area stretching thousands of kilometers from Greece to Portugal, CBS News correspondent Ramy Inocencio reports.
The widespread heatwave that has fueled those blazes stretched as far as Scotland on Tuesday, sending cities across the UK to record-breaking temperatures and leaving Londoners shocked to see their city hit by the same type of bushfires that they’ve grown accustomed to watching on the news.
Charred soil and burnt-out houses in the British capital are testament to the fact that even stereotypically damp and drab Britain, where umbrellas and coats are more common than air-conditioning, cannot escape the effects of a rapidly warming climate.
Houses destroyed in a major fire in Wennington, Greater London, England are seen on July 20, 2022. Fires broke out across London the day before in record-breaking heat. Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg/Getty
Rare wildfires burned and raged across London on Tuesday as much of England endured over 100 degree heat. In the town of Coningsby in eastern England, a new temperature record was set at 40.3 degrees Celsius, which is over 104 degrees Fahrenheit.
With much of the country having spent a month or more with barely a drop of rain, the searing temperatures were all it took to set fire to match-dry grass and scrub in backyards and along freeways.
London Fire Brigade had its busiest day since World War II, with firefighters responding to more than 2,600 calls while battling 12 fires, according to Mayor Sadiq Khan.
At least 41 properties have been destroyed by the fires in London, the mayor said, and 16 firefighters have been treated for smoke inhalation or other injuries.
Firefighters at the scene of a fire in the village of Wennington, east London, as London Fire Brigade called a serious incident due to “a huge increase” in fires in the capital on July 19, 2022. Yui Mok/PA Images/Getty
Dee Ncube and her family fled their burning neighborhood in the capital, leaving everything behind. She told Inocencio that she had only seen something like this in movies or on TV.
“We have nothing, everything is gone,” Timothy Stock, whose home was among the victims of the blaze in the Greater London village of Wennington, told CBS News’ affiliate network BBC News.
Cabinet Secretary Kit Malthouse told fellow MPs on Wednesday that 13 people died amid the heatwave after “getting into trouble swimming in rivers, reservoirs and lakes in recent days – seven of them teenage boys”.
But while many Londoners were shocked by the extreme heat, those concerned with the Earth’s changing climate were not.
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“That’s it, right? This is the climate change promised to us by scientists,” said Dr. Michal Nachmany, climate policy expert at the London School of Economics, told CBS News. “This extreme weather is life threatening and we really want to make sure people are not under the illusion that this is serious and it is here to stay.”
Climate activists also wanted to emphasize Tuesday’s extremes as a warning of impending danger and a call to action.
Demonstrators from a protest group called ‘Just Stop Oil’ climbed metal frames for signs above the M25, one of Britain’s busiest motorways, which circles London, causing a long traffic jam on Wednesday morning.
All temperature records will be wiped out, thousands of people are expected to die from heat stroke and @UKParliament are too busy fighting among themselves to even care.
Don’t be a spectator! Take action. WE HAVE TO ACT FAST. WE MUST #JUSTSTOPOIL. pic.twitter.com/qn2RDa1btd
— JustStopOil (@JustStop_Oil) July 20, 2022
The group said it regretted the disruption to morning commuters but has declared the M25 “a site of civil resistance” and warned of more protests in the coming days.
“This is the moment when climate inaction is truly revealed in all its murderous glory for all to see: as an elite-driven death project that will wipe out all life if we let it,” the group said in a statement , announcing their action and demanding that the UK government stop investing in fossil fuel extraction.
Other countries further south were still battling large fires that broke out last week on Wednesday. Thousands have died and tens of thousands have been evacuated.
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Firefighters in south-west France were still battling twin blazes twice the size of Paris for the ninth straight day on Wednesday, but weather conditions there also improved overnight and officials said they were gaining control.
“Our assessment is generally positive. The situation improved overnight,” local fire department spokesman Arnaud Mendousse told reporters, according to The Associated Press. President Emmanuel Macron was due to visit the hard-hit Gironde region on Wednesday, where the fires have displaced some 37,000 people from their homes.
Spain and Portugal were still recording new deaths from extreme heat and fires, with the number already well over 1,000.
Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Wednesday that “more than 500 people have died from such high temperatures” in his country in the last week, citing a statistical analysis by a public health institute.
“I urge citizens to exercise extreme caution,” Sanchez said, adding that “the climate emergency is a reality.”
A wildfire burns near a house in Ntrafi, Athens, Greece July 19, 2022. COSTAS BALTAS/R
Further west in Greece, police were running door to door shouting at residents to flee north of Athens as a fire approached.
Evacuations also continued in Italy, where the fires were still growing and temperatures have not yet begun to relax.
While the worst of the heatwave appeared to be over across much of western Europe and temperatures fell dramatically overnight from northern Britain to southern France, climate experts and activists this week were keen to get to the heart of the matter of an exception, those exceptions are expected to become more frequent – and yet to come get hotter.
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