Spain 5th Nation In A Week To Invoke EU Mutual Aid Pact For Fires; Lethal Heatwave Continues Across Southern Europe

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Spain has become the fifth country in a week to activate the EU’s civil protection mechanism to fight the fires. The European Commission announced that two planes stationed in France were expected to be deployed in Spain on Thursday. Greece is expected to receive two Swedish helicopters stationed in Bulgaria under the mechanism, which it activated on Tuesday, while Bulgaria, Albania and Montenegro – where a soldier died fighting a fire near the capital – have also received support from firefighters from several EU countries.

The EU’s civil protection mechanism, which coordinates responses during wars and other crises, has been activated 16 times during the current fire season. The number of activations in 2025 is already the same as the figure for the whole of the 2024 fire season, the commission said.

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The deadly fires come as southern Europe suffers intense heat that has broken temperature records across the continent – made worse by fossil fuel pollution that traps sunlight and heats the planet – and which has dried out vegetation. “It’s obvious that climate change is exacerbating the severity of fires,” said Eduardo Rojas Briales, a forestry researcher at the Polytechnic University of Valencia and former deputy director general of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization. “But it’s not responsible to wait for greenhouse gas emissions to drop … as the sole approach to addressing the problem.”

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A report published on Thursday by XDI, a climate risk analysis group, found that the climate crisis has doubled the risk of infrastructure damage from forest fires in France, Italy, Greece, Romania and Bulgaria since 1990. It predicted risk would increase further still in future. “We’re all asking ourselves, how much worse can it get?” said Karl Mallon, XDI’s head of science and technology. “According to our latest analysis, a lot.”

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/14/wildfires-claim-third-life-in-spain-as-intense-heat-continues-across-europe