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Western France suffers a "heat apocalypse" with record temperatures and severe fires

2022-07-18T22:11:30.918Z


Nearly 30,000 people have been evacuated on the French west coast as various fires spread, made worse by extreme heat.


The heat wave that France has been experiencing for a week reached its peak on the west coast of the country on Monday, where a "heat apocalypse" was being experienced, in the words of a head of the French meteorological service Météo-France, which threatened to melt the historical records of maximum temperatures in the region in force for more than half a century.

The alerts from the authorities in the face of extreme heat joined the efforts to control the various fires that have been ravaging the same western part of the country for days and have already destroyed more than 15,000 hectares, in addition to causing the evacuation of thousands of people.

The first heat record to fall was that of the Breton city of Brest, where at 1:00 p.m. the local weather station recorded a temperature of 35.8 degrees that continued to rise throughout the day until it reached 39.3 degrees.

Until now, the record for this Breton city, located in the department of Finisterre - one of the 15 in the entire country on red alert, the maximum, due to extreme heat - was set at 35.2 degrees reached in July 1949. The temperatures of other neighboring towns also pulverized their own records on a day in which it was expected to reach or even exceed 40 degrees in much of Brittany.

A little further south, in Pays de la Loire, the city of Nantes also broke its record by reaching 42 degrees, compared to the 40.3 degrees set as a milestone since 1949.

The heat wave should start, after a last "scorching night", from the west coast to come back and "intensify in the east of France, according to Météo-France.

Although not as high as in that area of ​​the country, temperatures were high this Monday throughout the Gallic territory.

The national thermal indicator (the average temperature of the thirty official meteorological stations strategically located throughout the country) also threatened to exceed the two most recent historical peaks, the heat wave of July 2019 and that of 2003, according to the

Le Parisien

newspaper

.

The latter marked a before and after in the prevention of this type of phenomenon in France, since, although the thermometers did not rise as much as in 2019, the 2003 heat wave left a record number of 15,000 deaths (in 2019, they were 1,435 deaths directly related to the dog days).

Regardless of the records, temperatures throughout France exceeded 30 degrees and, in the lower half of the country, from the west coast to the Rhône valley, even exceeded 38-40 degrees.

The Ministry of Health has spent days calling citizens to establish "maximum vigilance" in the face of high temperatures and to "adopt good reflexes", while official messages calling to hydrate frequently, avoid leaving the house as much as possible and not exercise outdoors libre multiply in the media and advertising panels.

According to Météo-France, the "extreme" heat episode is far from over and "could last a total of 15 days", with alerts "likely to persist in the east, especially around the Rhône valley", according to the service national weather.

The high temperatures are also making it difficult to put out two strong fires that have mobilized the emergency services for a week in the southwest of the country, in the Gironde department, south of Bordeaux.

So far, 15,000 hectares of forest have burned and 16,000 people have been evacuated during the day.

Since the fires began, a week ago, there are already more than 30,000 evacuees.

"The situation is very complicated," warned the prefect of Gironde, Fabienne Buccio, on Monday, referring to the heat wave, which has been joined by a wind that complicated the tasks of putting out the fires.

These continued in Teste-de-Buch, in the coastal area south of Arcachon, where the evacuation of a thousand animals from the local zoo was also announced on Monday, and in the inland region of Landiras.

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Source: elparis

All life articles on 2022-07-18

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