From Athens to Bordeaux, Europe’s wildfire emergency rages on

LACANAU, Aug 2: Europe’s wildfire crisis fractured along starkly different fronts Sunday: gale-force winds drove flames deeper into the Athens region and forced fresh evacuations, France guarded a still-burning scar four times the size of Paris against renewed spread, and Spain’s major fires finally stopped advancing.

The center of immediate danger was Greece. Flames spread through western Attica, the capital’s surrounding region, threatening villages and an industrial district outside Megara as violent gusts prevented firefighting aircraft from collecting water from the sea.

Two firefighting helicopters collided while battling a wildfire in the Psatha area west of Athens, the fire service said on Sunday.

"Search and rescue teams were immediately mobilised to locate and assist the crews," it said.

Earlier this week, two firefighters died battling a blaze on Crete, while a third was killed in a separate fire in the Peloponnese.

But the easing emergency farther west offered little sense of an ending. France’s largest wildfire remained contained after 224,000 people were forced to flee in what may have been the largest civilian evacuation outside wartime. Active pockets still burned across 420 square kilometers (162 square miles) of devastated forest, thousands remained unable to return home, and nearly 3,000 firefighters were deployed against that blaze and a second, still-uncontained fire in Provence.

Fires in France and Spain alone have driven roughly a third of a million people from homes and vacation sites, emptied communities at the height of the European summer and stretched firefighters, aircraft and emergency services across simultaneous disasters.

Europe entered 2026 after its worst wildfire year on record, when more than 10,000 square kilometers (3,860 square miles) burned. Wildfires cause estimated economic losses of about 2 billion euros in a typical year, according to the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre.

The crisis is unfolding on the world’s fastest-warming continent. Europe has warmed at more than twice the global average since the 1980s, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.�"AP