A wildfire engulfed homes in a picturesque Croatian resort on Thursday night and Friday morning, killing one person, injuring 40 and forcing 1,200 to evacuate, officials said, as the European Union warned that pockets of “very extreme” wildfire conditions stretched across the Continent.
Hundreds more were evacuated from a beach resort in northern Greece and from a village in southwest France, while a major grass fire engulfed houses in England, officials said.
Record-breaking heat and drought that scientists link to climate change have created ideal conditions for wildfires across Europe this summer, especially in France, Spain and Greece. The Balkans region has also endured several heatwaves
Local residents and tourists described scenes of chaos as they fled in their cars from a fire outside Omis, a scenic town on Croatia’s prized Dalmatian coast surrounded by trees and rocky hills.
The fire appeared to have calmed on Friday morning, said chief fire commander Slavko Tucakovic.
Authorities found one charred body while, of 40 people treated in the nearby hospital in Split, seven were in a serious condition, the hospital said.
In northern Greece, people wearing face masks, some clutching children or pets, boarded dinghies and boats in the seaside town of Siviri as the fire devoured a forest and columns of smoke turned the cloudless sky a dark grey.
The coastguard said more than 300 people had been evacuated by boat from the town, which sits on a peninsula of woodland, olive groves and beaches south of Greece’s second city, Thessaloniki.
More than 140 firefighters, nine aircraft and seven helicopters were deployed to battle flames, while fishing vessels took part in the evacuation.
Wildfires in Britain and Wales have hit a record level for a second consecutive year, fuelled by five heatwaves this summer, Phil Garrigan, chair of the Britain’s national fire chiefs’ council, said on Friday.
[ ‘Inferno’ tears through homes in British midlands as 54 receive medical treatmentOpens in new window ]
“We’re anticipating this being not just a record-breaking year but a considerable increase on the number of wildfires previously experienced,” Garrigan said.
In France, authorities evacuated 525 people from the village of Luglon after a wildfire broke out in the southwestern Landes region, not far from an area already devastated by major blazes this summer.
Rescue services in Spain late on Thursday launched an operation to remove the remains of three kings who ruled the Aragón region in the 11th century from a monastery threatened by a wildfire.
An even larger fire in Huelva, in southern Spain, has burned 31,000 hectares so far and forced the evacuation of 700 people.
Firefighting aircraft in Spain have clocked more than 8,200 hours flying time so far this year, exceeding the number of hours flown in 2025, when a record 393,000 hectares of land burned, Spain’s environment minister Sara Aagesen said on Bluesky.
The EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service warned of “very extreme” conditions across a large area of central and eastern Europe, with additional pockets over southern Britain, Ireland, northern France and southern Sweden, in its outlook for the week to August 19th.
The average high across western Europe on Friday was forecast to be 31.2 degrees, which is eight degrees above what was typical from 1961 to 1990, data from the Reuters Climate Monitor showed. The temperature for Europe as a whole was 1.6 degrees above the 1961-1990 average, it said. – Reuters