LONDON—London is burning on the hottest day here since records began. Firefighters in more than a hundred trucks were dispatched to all corners of the city as fields of grass, fences, trees, and buildings were engulfed in flames.
The mercury tipped the 40 degrees Celsius barrier (104 degrees Fahrenheit) for the first time in the history of a city that was founded in 47 A.D. To be strictly accurate, we can only be sure it’s the most brutish and sweltering day since the Brits began to note down daily temperatures in 1659.
One thing is for certain: London wasn’t built for this. Vanishingly few homes have air-conditioning, residential architecture cannot compete with the thick stone walls and shaded courtyards of Central Europe, and nobody has the first idea of how to deal with a wildfire.
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That never used to be a problem. This summer, however, has smashed the records and a clutch of wildfires broke out around London Tuesday, on a day when schools, businesses, and train lines were shuttered and people were warned to shelter in their homes.
The largest of dozens of fires swept across grassland around Pea Lane in East London, sending smoke billowing over the M25 motorway, which encircles London. Around 175 firefighters battled to put it out as emergency protocols were instituted all across the city, making a mockery of right-wing pundits’ claims that climate fears for London were overblown.
“London Fire Brigade has just declared a major incident in response to a huge surge in fires across the capital today,” said London mayor Sadiq Khan.
For once, Britain began to look like the rest of Europe, where wildfires spawned by a deadly heatwave have been creating harrowing situations for humans across the region.
A man in Spain was engulfed in flames when his excavator caught fire while he dug a trench in an attempt to stop a raging wildfire from reaching the northwestern town of Tabara. Video of the terrifying incident shows the flames closing in on him and catching his clothing as he ran from his abandoned digger. He was eventually airlifted to a hospital where he is being treated for serious burns, according to local press reports.
The same fire terrified passengers traveling from Madrid to Ferrol in the Galicia region a day earlier when flames suddenly jumped the tracks, surrounding several train cars. Terrified passengers posted photos of the event on social media.
High-temperature records are also being shattered across France, where the new nighttime high temperature was set overnight Monday to Tuesday as temps failed to drop below 32.8/91.4 degrees for the first time since records were kept. Fires there have also wiped out five tourist campsites, sending 6,000 campers fleeing on Tuesday.
In Portugal, a couple in their 70s were found carbonized in their car as they had clearly run into flames as they tried to escape their rural home. More than 1,000 people have died in fire-related incidents since the heatwave began eight days ago, according to BBC.
Fires are also raging in Morocco, Crete, Croatia, and Greece and a number of Europe’s most important rivers—the Rhine which traverses Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and the Po in Italy—are drying up, according to the European Space Agency, threatening hydroelectric plants and hampering irrigation systems. The Rhine, which is a major transport waterway, is too low for cargo ships in several spots, hampering Europe’s supply chain.
Europe’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring service warned Tuesday that southern Europe is now experiencing “very high levels” of surface ozone pollution, particularly in northern Italy and the Iberian Peninsula. “The potential impacts of very high ozone pollution on human health can be considerable both in terms of respiratory and cardiovascular illness,” the group’s senior scientist, Mark Parrington, told CNN. “Higher values can lead to symptoms such as sore throat, coughing, headache, and an increased risk of asthma attacks.”
