Sunday, June 23, 2024, 2:09 p.m.
Hundreds of firefighters are fighting this Sunday against the fires that are ravaging Türkiye and Greece. At least between 11 and 18 deaths are recorded in the former Ottoman territory in a wave of accidents reminiscent of the wave of fire that hit the country just last August. Meanwhile, in Greece, at least three towns have been evacuated and nearly eighty different fire outbreaks have been recorded.
Greek authorities suspect that most cases are provoked. Last year they already had a horrible experience, with 350 accidents that practically devastated the islands. Many of them were not natural, although high temperatures and heat storms helped widen the catastrophe. At the moment, the Police have arrested the thirteen sailors of a yacht who caused a fire on the island of Hydra after launching fireworks. The incandescent remains fell onto a pine forest where the flames caught immediately.
The crew and their passengers, a group of Kazakh tourists, tried to put it out. Failing to do so, they called the firefighters and quickly left the area, but were later intercepted by the authorities. The detainees will be available for prosecution this weekend. They face sentences of twenty years in prison.
In both Greece and Turkey the firefighting and meteorological services have expressed their alarm due to the early nature of the fires, which usually appear at the height of summer. However, temperatures already exceed 35 degrees Celsius in many places.
In fact, the Turkish Meteorological Directorate has warned this Sunday that the wind temperature is between 6 and 10 degrees higher than it should be at this time of year. He also predicts a spiral of factors that could aggravate the state of the fires at least until Wednesday, when they hope for a change in conditions. There will be wind gusts exceeding 60 kilometers per hour on the coasts of Marmara and the northern Aegean Sea, thunderstorms and episodes of extreme heat in central Anatolia, the Mediterranean and Thrace. “In short, a very favorable situation is expected for fires to break out,” department sources underline.
The situation has become so serious in some areas that, for example, in the Adana region there are bakers who bake bread surrounded by ice cubes and subjected to cold baths to mitigate temperatures of up to 80 and 90 degrees in their workshops, while Many drivers have given up using their cars, which pile up in parking lots, because the interior registers temperatures of between 50 and 60 degrees Celsius.
However, the situation in other places is more dramatic. In the town of Denizli, the emergency services, together with volunteers and the town’s own residents, are trying this Sunday to prevent a forest fire from destroying the entire urban area after having reached the houses on the outskirts. Spain has sent three helicopters to collaborate with Turkish forces in extinguishing the fires.
In the Greek region of Arcadia, in the south of the country, there are also municipalities under threat. The authorities have evacuated Apiditsa, Xrusa and Xoremi due to the risk of them being engulfed by flames. In Achaia, nearly 30,000 hectares of forests and crops have been reduced to ashes in twelve hours. Firefighters have given the alert due to the adverse weather conditions that have generated fire fronts that advance at the unusual speed of sixteen kilometers per hour.
While fires rage in Europe, one hundred million people are under an extreme heat alert in the United States. Temperatures are scorching in the Mid-Atlantic and in the urban fringe of the East Coast between New York and Washington. The thermometers have been around 38 degrees for more than a week practically without interruption and in Virginia and Baltimore all records since 1988 have already been surpassed. The authorities have also closed several national parks to avoid risks. Last year hundreds of tourists died or suffered serious health problems for risking hiking in these spaces under the sun. Right now, New England medical centers handle a daily average of 833 emergencies per 100,000 visits due to heat, which is the highest rate detected in the United States.
And as the heat scorches much of the country, another is under threat of flooding. In the State of Dakota, floods are expected to hit between Monday and Tuesday, so thousands of citizens have been evacuated from farms and rural towns along with their livestock. Mexico has also prepared for the effects of Tropical Cyclone Beryl, which will hit 25 States, with special intensity in the Yucatan Peninsula, Tamaulipas and Veracruz. The phenomenon hits the country’s coast when it has not yet recovered from Storm Alberto, which left four dead and enormous material damage.
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