Wildfires threaten Turkey's fourth-largest city as southern Europe grapples with blazes
Meanwhile, firefighters elsewhere in the region, including Greece, Bulgaria and Montenegro, were also battling blazes fed by unusually high temperatures, dry conditions and strong winds.
Overnight fires in the forested mountains surrounding Bursa in northwest Turkey spread rapidly, tinting the night sky over the city's eastern suburbs with a red glow. Dozens of severe wildfires have hit the country daily since late June, with the government declaring two western provinces, Izmir and Bilecik, disaster areas on Friday.
Bursa governor's office said in a statement Sunday that 1,765 people had been safely evacuated from villages to the northeast as more than 1,900 firefighters battled the flames. The highway linking Bursa to the capital, Ankara, was closed as surrounding forests burned.
A firefighter died from a heart attack while on the job, the city's mayor, Mustafa Bozbey, said in a statement, adding that the flames had scorched 3,000 hectares (7,413 acres) around the city.
Orhan Saribal, an opposition parliamentarian for the province, described the scene as 'an apocalypse.'
By morning, lessening winds brought some respite to firefighters, who continued efforts to battle the flames. However, TV footage revealed an ashen landscape where farms and pine forests had earlier stood.
Forestry Minister Ibrahim Yumakli said fire crews across the country confronted 84 separate blazes Saturday. The country's northwest was under the greatest threat, including Karabuk, where wildfires have burned since Tuesday, he said.
Unseasonably high temperatures, dry conditions and strong winds have been fueling the wildfires.
The General Directorate of Meteorology said Turkey recorded its highest ever temperature of 50.5 degrees Celsius (122.9 degrees Fahrenheit) in the southeastern Sirnak province on Friday. The highest temperatures for July were seen in 132 other locations, it said.
Fourteen people have died in recent weeks, including 10 rescue volunteers and forestry workers killed Wednesday in a fire in Eskisehir in western Turkey.
Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc said late Saturday that prosecutors had investigated fires in 33 provinces since June 26, and that legal action had been taken against 97 suspects.
In Greece, firefighters battled active wildfires in the country's southwest and on the island of Kythera on Sunday, following a blaze that scorched the northern Athens suburb of Kryoneri on Saturday. High temperatures, reaching 38°C (100°F) or more, persist across much of the country, though winds have eased slightly.
In Kryoneri, 27 residents were evacuated overnight with police assistance after some initially ignored warnings. Authorities urged the public to comply with evacuation orders, warning that resistance puts both civilians and rescuers in danger.
The fire service reported three people hospitalized with breathing issues and one firefighter treated for burns at a military hospital. On the island of Evia, where another fire is now under control, media reports indicate large numbers of animals perished in barns.
On Bulgaria's southern borders with Greece and Turkey, as well as the western Serbian frontier, firefighters battled wildfires as the government declared the worst-hit provinces disaster zones. Residents across nearly half the country were issued with a code red warning, the highest level.
National Fire Service chief Alexander Djartov told reporters that 236 wildfires were burning, many fanned by strong winds. The government had asked EU partners for help, he added, and aircraft were expected from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, France, Hungary and Sweden later Sunday.
In the southwestern Strumyani region, overnight blazes forced firefighters to retreat. They were reinforced Sunday by soldiers. Dozens of people fled their homes in the western Tran region as flames threatened villages near the Serbian border.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Associated Press
an hour ago
- Associated Press
Indonesia's Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki erupts again, spewing giant ash plumes miles away
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Mount Lewotobi Laki Laki, one of Indonesia's most active volcanoes, erupted for a second straight day, sending a column of volcanic materials and ash up to 18 kilometers (11 miles) into the sky early Saturday and blanketing villages with debris. No casualties were immediately reported. Another eruption Friday evening had sent clouds of ash up to 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) high and had lit up the night sky with glowing lava and bolts of lightning. The two eruptions happened in a span of less than five hours. Indonesia's Geology Agency recorded an avalanche of searing gas clouds mixed with rocks and lava traveling up to 5 kilometers (3 miles) down the slopes of the mountain. Drone observations showed deep movement of magma, setting off tremors that registered on seismic monitors. Volcanic material, including hot thumb-sized gravel, were thrown up to 8 kilometers (5 miles) from the crater, covering nearby villages and towns with thick volcanic residue, the agency said. It asked residents to be vigilant about heavy rainfall that could trigger lava flows in rivers originating from the volcano. Saturday's eruption was one of Indonesia's largest since 2010 when Mount Merapi, the country's most volatile volcano, erupted on the densely populated island of Java. That eruption killed more than 350 people and forced hundreds of thousands to evacuate. It also came less than a month after a major eruption on July 7 forced the delay or cancelation of dozens of flights at Bali's Ngurah Rai airport, and covered roads and rice fields with thick, gray mud and rocks. Lewotobi Laki Laki, a 1,584-meter (5,197-foot) volcano on the remote island of Flores, has been at the highest alert level since an eruption on June 18 and an exclusion zone has been doubled to a 7-kilometer (4.3-mile) radius as eruptions became more frequent. The Indonesian government has permanently relocated thousands of residents after a series of eruptions there killed nine people and destroyed thousands of homes in November. Indonesia is an archipelago of more than 280 million people with frequent seismic activity. It has 120 active volcanoes and sits along the 'Ring of Fire,' a horseshoe-shaped series of seismic fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin.
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Yahoo
‘Fire clouds' springing up around the Grand Canyon
Wildfires in Utah and Arizona, near the Grand Canyon, are producing "fire clouds" that can be seen for hundreds of miles and further fuel the fires. The Dragon Bravo fire near the Grand Canyon has become the largest wildfire in the continental U.S. this year, consuming 111,000 acres and destroying the historic lodge at Grand Canyon National Park. The fire is only nine percent contained, as extreme heat and strong winds continue to fuel the blaze, according to the latest update. Both it and the Monroe Fire, burning further north near Monroe, Utah, are generating pyrocumulus clouds — sometimes called "fire clouds" — that form when air over a fire becomes superheated and rises in large, smoky columns. The massive clouds are visible for hundreds of miles and resemble the shape of an anvil. The fires can also generate pyrocumulonimbus clouds, which trigger thunderstorms, and may further fuel the wildfires. "If they get high enough, they can also create downdrafts, and that's something we really watch out for because that can quickly spread the fire and can be very dangerous for firefighters who are doing their work on the ground," Lisa Jennings, a spokesperson for the Southwest Area Incident Management Team, told CBS News. Several fire crews battling the Monroe fire were forced to pull back on Wednesday when fire clouds created dangerous conditions on the ground. "Think of the fire as kind of like a hot-air balloon, so it adds buoyancy and things rise as a result," Derek Mallia, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Utah who studies fire clouds, told CBS News. "You get this towering thunderstorm over the fire, and just like any other thunderstorm it gets really windy underneath it. Because it's the West, these thunderstorms tend to be very dry." If that's not frightening enough, a fire tornado spun up in Utah and tore through a neighborhood with wind speeds of 122 mph, according to the National Weather Service. Mallia said that fire clouds are likely to appear more frequently due to climate change driven by the human burning of fossil fuels. Climate change is producing longer fire seasons, drought conditions, and extreme weather events, as we're seeing play out in the southwest. The temperature and weather conditions in the southwest are continuing to fuel the fires and erasing the gains firefighters have made in containing the blazes. The Dragon Bravo fire crossed a threshold recently, becoming what the U.S. Forest Service calls a "megafire." Megafires earn that frightening title when they reach more than 100,000 acres in size. Driving around the totality of the fire would take about as long as driving from New York to Washington, D.C. According to fire officials, the blaze in Arizona is continuing to push north. In Utah, the Monroe fire has consumed approximately 50,000 acres and the state's governor, Spencer Cox, said "terrible conditions" are continuing to fuel the blaze. 'These terrible conditions that are making it impossible for us to get ahead of this fire exist in every corner of the state right now,' Cox said. 'It would be very easy to have more fires like this one, so we need people to be incredibly cautious.' The Monroe fire is only seven percent contained.
CBS News
6 hours ago
- CBS News
Over 600 American firefighters battling Canadian wildfires; roughly 16 million acres burned
Wildfires continued to rage across Canada on Friday, with nearly three dozen new blazes, bringing the total number of active fires to 673. According to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, there have been more than 3,700 fires this season, trailing only 2023 as the most severe ever, and scorching roughly 16 million acres. "It's an unfortunate reality," Shannon Graf, wildfire information officer for the Government of the Northwest Territories, lamented to WCCO News. "If we could stop the smoke we'd be stopping it here real quick." Many out-of-control fires are in the Northwest Territories, a massive expanse that borders Alaska. Hundreds of other blazes are raging in the provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan, just to the northwest of Minnesota. "We've got crews from out of the territory and from out of the country," Graf explained. "We've got helicopters, we've got airplanes. We've got crews on the ground. We've got incident management teams running all of these crews. Basically, we are working our people as much and as best we can while still keeping them healthy." More than 600 American firefighters have traveled to Canada this summer to help battle those wildfires, the U.S. Forest Service reported last month. Officials at the CIFFC said crews have also flown in from Mexico, Chile and Australia, among other nations.
