After weeks of drought and heat, numerous forest fires and bushfires are currently raging in southern Italy. There were hundreds of fire fighting missions in Sicily alone.
- The Sahara air causes extreme temperatures and drought in southern Italy, just like in Greece and Turkey.
- After forest fires first broke out on the island of Sardinia, flames are now spreading to silicon and southern Italy.
- The fire brigade moved out from Friday to Saturday for a total of 800 missions because of the fires.
Catania – For days, emergency services in southern Italy have been fighting against blazing bushfires and forest fires. After the island of Sardinia was particularly affected in the past few days, the fire brigades are now reporting hundreds of extinguishing operations in Sicily. Here even an airport had to temporarily stop operations. The regions of Apulia, Calabria, Lazio and Campania are also affected by the ongoing forest fires.
On Twitter, the emergency services of the Italian fire brigade Vigili del Fuoco spoke of more than 800 missions due to the forest fires in the past 24 hours, 250 of them on the island of Sicily alone. The Ansa news agency reported that in the area around Catania in the east of the island alone, 150 people had to be brought to safety with boats that had trapped the flames and driven them to the beaches. Thick smoke spread over the island, and operations at Catania airport ceased for some time. Extremely high temperatures and massive drought still prevail in Sicily and the rest of southern Italy. The heat wave is reported to last at least until the end of the week.
The forest fires in southern Italy are spreading through drought and wind
In addition to the emergency services on the ground, numerous helicopters with extinguishing water tanks are also in action against the fires in the fight against the forest fires. Sicily regional president Nello Musumeci wrote in a post on Facebook of a “devastation”. According to reports from the German Press Agency, arsonists are also responsible for some of the fires, according to Musumeci. They are doing irreversible damage to the forest’s heritage and putting people at risk. The great drought and strong winds also spread the flames.
In the past few days, the island of Sardinia, popular * with tourists in Italy, had already been badly hit by forest fires. In olive groves, the flames destroyed several thousand-year-old trees. In addition to firefighters and helicopters from Italy, according to reports from the AFP news agency, emergency services and fire-fighting planes from France and Greece were also deployed to protect the population. (ska / dpa)
In Turkey, too, the emergency services have been fighting violent forest fires * for days. * fr.de is an offer from IPPEN.MEDIA.
Rubriklistenbild: © Alessandro Tocco
