标签： Oceania

The arid hills of southeastern Spain’s Mediterranean coast, long a quiet haven for retirees and holidaymakers from across Europe, have been reduced to ash by a devastating fast-moving wildfire that has claimed 12 lives and scorched more than 6,000 hectares of land. Survivors of the blaze, which broke out last Thursday amid record-breaking extreme heat that turned dry vegetation into a tinderbox, have shared harrowing accounts of sudden escape and narrow survival as flames advanced faster than many could outrun.

When the fire’s edge began to encroach on the small village of Bedar, the epicenter of the disaster, 72-year-old local town councillor Manoli Ramos received an urgent, last-minute order from the mayor: race to the village church and ring its bells to sound the alarm for residents who had not yet received official evacuation alerts. “We rang the bells many times so people would know,” Ramos told AFP from her temporary refuge in nearby Los Gallardos, one of hundreds of displaced residents who fled their homes as the blaze moved through the region.

Official preliminary investigations point to a broken power line as the likely ignition source, with the extreme heat wave that has gripped southern Spain creating ideal conditions for the fire to spread rapidly. Most of the 12 victims killed were foreign residents, many of whom died trapped in their vehicles or while attempting to escape on foot. Officials have noted that many of the foreign residents in the area live in scattered, isolated properties outside the core of Bedar, drawn by the privacy and quiet of the rural hillside — a choice that left many with slower access to emergency warnings and fewer clear escape routes as the fire advanced.

“Foreigners live scattered outside Bedar,” Ramos explained. “They have beautiful homes and their belongings. They like living a little away from the centre.”

For 52-year-old Moroccan resident Hassan Oulghazzi, who has called Bedar home for 16 years, the first sign of danger was not visible flames, but an ominous dark cloud hanging over the hills that quickly turned into thick, choking black smoke. Before he could spot the fire advancing, local police were pounding on his front door, ordering him to leave immediately.

“How could you not be afraid?” Oulghazzi said. “When someone knocks on your door and tells you: ‘Get up, come on, leave here. This is real, you have to go.’” He fled with his wife and daughter with only the clothes they were wearing, leaving all their possessions behind. The family has since taken shelter at a municipal sports hall in the coastal town of Garrucha, where the Red Cross is providing food, medical care and support to hundreds of evacuees. For Oulghazzi, his own fear of displacement pales in comparison to the grief of losing neighbors and acquaintances in the blaze.

“Everyone was afraid, but I am really touched by the dead and those who were burned. I really am,” he said. “There are some people I know.”

Local officials have confirmed that some of the victims did not follow official orders to evacuate early or shelter in place once the flames reached their properties, a choice that proved fatal as the fire moved faster than many anticipated. For survivors who did escape, the scale of the destruction is still difficult to process, with many describing the scene as something out of a disaster film, not real life.

Eighty-seven-year-old British evacuee Austin Crilly, who has lived in the region for years and says he has weathered no shortage of crises, told reporters that Thursday’s blaze was unlike anything he had ever experienced. Crilly was watching television at home when he spotted what he thought was an unusual large dark cloud on the horizon. Minutes later, police arrived at his door with a direct order to evacuate immediately. “Take your money, take your cards and get out,” he recalled officers telling him. Like many other evacuees, Crilly has been staying at the Garrucha sports hall, waiting for updates on when it will be safe to return to assess his home.

British couple Martin and Elizabeth Smith, who were staying at a local campsite for a holiday, echoed that sense of surrealism. Martin Smith, 63, who has already had to cut his trip short and return to the United Kingdom, said the chaos of the escape was something he had only ever seen on screen. “It wasn’t good. Not good at all. I’d never seen anything like it. You see things like that in films, but never in real life,” he said. Despite the trauma of the disaster, Smith added that the fire has not dimmed his affection for Spain as a holiday destination. “It hasn’t put us off coming to Spain,” he said.

As a record-breaking third heatwave bears down on France, a quarter of the nation’s mainland territory has been placed under the country’s highest heat warning, forcing iconic Paris landmarks including the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, and the Musee d’Orsay to shut their doors hours earlier than their usual summer schedules.

France’s national meteorological service Meteo-France placed 24 mainland departments — home to more than 22 million people, per an Agence France-Presse tally — on maximum red heat alert on Saturday. An additional 59 departments across mainland France remain under an orange heat warning, one tier below the highest emergency level. The extreme heat has hit during a busy national holiday weekend, with millions of travelers crowding national highways and rail networks ahead of the July 14 Bastille Day celebration.

A spokesperson for the Eiffel Tower, the 324-meter steel monument that draws 7 million annual visitors and typically stays open past midnight during peak summer tourist season, confirmed that the landmark would implement extraordinary early closures at 4 p.m. (1400 GMT) both Saturday and Sunday, a measure put in place directly due to projected extreme high temperatures. Two of Paris’s other most visited cultural institutions have followed suit: the Louvre, the world’s most-visited art museum, will close at 4 p.m. from Friday through Monday, while the Musee d’Orsay will shut at 5 p.m. from Saturday through Wednesday in response to the extreme heat.

Beyond disrupted tourist schedules, the heatwave has forced widespread cancellations of traditional Bastille Day firework displays across hundreds of French towns. Officials cited elevated wildfire risk and extremely dry vegetation conditions for the cancellations. A senior French official confirmed Friday that wildfires have already burned twice as much land across France in 202X as they did during the same period last year. Speaking on Saturday, President Emmanuel Macron urged the public to remain vigilant, noting that 9 out of 10 wildfires in the country stem from human activity.

“One single moment of inattention can put families at risk, endanger the first responders who protect us, and destroy our natural landscapes,” Macron wrote in a post on social platform X.

This heatwave marks the third extreme heat event to hit France since May. A record-shattering heatwave in June pushed official excess death figures above 2,000, with an additional 300 excess deaths recorded during a late May heat event, according to national public health data. The French government has faced growing public criticism in recent weeks, with opponents and climate experts accusing the administration of being unprepared for the rising frequency of extreme heat events, a trend climate scientists have directly linked to anthropogenic climate change. Meteo-France forecasts that high temperatures will persist across the country through Bastille Day on July 14.

Sixteen months after one of the deadliest wildfires in modern Spanish history erupted in southern Spain’s Andalusia region, emergency crews have finally turned a corner in their battle against the blaze, thanks to a sudden shift in favorable weather conditions.

The fast-moving inferno first ignited on Thursday in the hilly Gallardos area, a scenic stretch of Andalusia that hosts a large community of foreign residents and seasonal tourists. By Saturday, improved atmospheric conditions — including dropping temperatures, receding high winds that had previously stoked the flames, and rising humidity — gave firefighters the opening they needed to launch a direct offensive against the blaze, a tactic that had been impossible for the first 48 hours of the emergency.

Twelve people from multiple nationalities have been confirmed killed in the fire, with most of the victims discovered in or near the small whitewashed village of Bedar. Many of the deceased were trapped while attempting to flee the advancing flames, either in their vehicles or on foot, regional officials confirmed. Authorities have also noted that a number of the victims failed to comply with mandatory evacuation orders or instructions to shelter in place as the fire approached their communities.

Survivors who escaped the blaze have described harrowing, nightmare-like scenes that they say will stay with them forever. “We were absolutely terrified. We could see the flames. It was horrific,” Manoli Ramos, 72, a local councillor in Bedar, told reporters. Ramos, who lived through a major 2012 wildfire in the same region, compared this event to something out of a nightmare: “This time it was like hell.”

Austin Crilly, an 87-year-old British resident who was evacuated by police from the high-risk zone, recalled the sudden speed with which the fire advanced. “I was watching television when I saw a huge black cloud, well I thought it was a cloud,” Crilly said. “I thought, ‘My God, I will shut the door’. Then, five minutes later, there was banging at the door. They said, ‘Take your money, take your cards and get out’.”

Martin Smith, a 63-year-old British tourist who was evacuated from a local campsite alongside his 65-year-old wife Elizabeth, called the scene unprecedented. “It wasn’t good. Not good at all. I’d never seen anything like it. You see things like that in films, but never in real life,” Smith said.

Antonio Sanz, chief of emergency management for the Andalusian regional government, announced Saturday that no new fatalities had been recorded overnight, a development he called “the best news we could have”. Spain’s Civil Guard has completed an initial sweep of burned areas, and while search operations continue, no additional bodies have been discovered so far.

Sanz also clarified public confusion around reports of 23 missing people, explaining that the count refers to individuals whose families have been unable to reach them, many of whom have already reached safe evacuation centers. Only seven formal missing persons reports have been filed with authorities to date. Officials caution that a final confirmed death toll will not be released until all recovered remains undergo autopsies and formal identification, which is still underway.

As of Saturday, the blaze has scorched approximately 6,600 hectares (16,300 acres) of rugged terrain, marked by steep ravines that make it nearly impossible for ground fire vehicles to access. Around 500 firefighting personnel, supported by more than 20 water-bombing aircraft, have been deployed to contain the spread of the fire.

Investigators currently believe the wildfire was sparked when a power line snapped amid weeks of extreme heat that has gripped Spain, with temperatures regularly exceeding 40°C. Those sustained high temperatures turned the region’s vegetation into dry, tinder-like fuel ready to ignite at the smallest spark.

Climate scientists around the world have repeatedly warned that human-caused climate change is increasing both the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, including the record-breaking heatwaves and large-scale wildfires that have become increasingly common across southern Europe in recent years.