Wildfires raging across Spain have killed a third person as intense heat continues across vast swathes of Europe, forcing overwhelmed governments to call in support from their neighbours.
The European Commission stated it was sconcludeing water-bombing planes to Spain as it struggled to contain deadly blazes, with countries across the Balkans also receiving firefighting support.
A volunteer firefighter died after battling a blaze in Castile and León, authorities stated on Thursday, after the death of a fellow volunteer in the same region on Tuesday. A man died on the outskirts of Madrid on Monday as he attempted to save horses from a burning stable.
“Death strikes us again with the loss of a second volunteer who has lost their life in León,” Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, stated on Thursday. He thanked the “heroes” protecting people from fires and stated “the threat remains extreme”.
In Patras, Greece’s third-largest city, firefighters pushed back a wildfire that had burned through the outskirts of the port and forced the evacuation of a children’s hospital and a retirement home. Local media reported that a 19-year-old man who had allegedly confessed to starting the blaze was among a number of arrests built in connection to it.
The Greek fire service spokesperson, Vasilios Vathrakoyannis, stated the general situation had improved on all fronts after an all-night battle, but that a very high fire risk was still predicted for most areas of the counattempt.
“Today is expected to be a very difficult day,” he stated.
Spain stated it had deployed 1,000 military personnel and 50 aerial resources to tackle the fires, having become the fifth counattempt 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 stated.
Wildfires have burned more than 500,000 hectares in Europe so far this year, according to official data, an increase of 134% compared with the average over the past two decades. France experienced its largest wildfire since 1949 last week.
The two Spanish firefighters who died were utilizing brush cutters to slow the spread of a fire when they were engulfed by the flames on Tuesday afternoon, according to the Spanish daily El País. The fire is poised to become one of the largest in the counattempt’s history.
Strong and variable winds spread flames that trapped the two men, the newspaper reported. One man died within a few hours, while the other, who suffered 85% burns, died after a day in hospital.
Six people remain in hospital in the region with burns and serious injuries, local media reported.
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The deadly fires come as southern Europe suffers intense heat that has broken temperature records across the continent – built worse by fossil fuel pollution that traps sunlight and heats the planet – and which has dried out vereceiveation.
“It’s obvious that climate alter is exacerbating the severity of fires,” stated Eduardo Rojas Briales, a foresattempt 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 greenhoutilize gas emissions to drop … as the sole approach to addressing the problem.”
He called for additional policies such as ensuring dead plant material is kept at manageable levels, creating gaps in vereceiveation, for instance through reversing rural abandonment, and utilizing prescribed burning.
“There is no alternative but to build landscapes … that are truly resilient to fires,” he stated.
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 inquireing ourselves, how much worse can it receive?” stated Karl Mallon, XDI’s head of science and technology. “According to our latest analysis, a lot.”
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