Law enforcement in France has made approximately 474 arrests on suspicion of starting wildfires since the beginning of July, with authorities stating that roughly 70 percent of those detained were suspected of deliberately igniting fires. The remainder were accused of causing fires accidentally. Among those arrested were 183 minors, and French media reported that a 15-year-old boy was detained in connection with a July wildfire near Bordeaux airport that resulted in the deaths of two firefighters.
The wave of fires across Europe coincides with a severe heatwave affecting the continent. Three in five European residents experienced temperatures of at least 30 degrees Celsius on Friday, with approximately 150 million people enduring 35 degrees or higher. The European Union’s Copernicus climate change service warned of “very extreme” wildfire conditions spanning large portions of central and eastern Europe, as well as pockets over southern Britain, Ireland, northern France, and southern Sweden. Western European temperatures averaged 31.2 degrees Celsius, approximately 8 degrees above historical norms from 1961 to 1990.
Major incidents occurred across multiple nations. In Croatia, a wildfire struck the coastal town of Lokva Rogoznica on Friday, resulting in one confirmed death, injuring 40 people, and forcing the evacuation of 1,200 residents. In France, a fresh wildfire consumed nearly 1,100 hectares of pine forest in less than 24 hours, prompting the evacuation of more than 525 people from the village of Luglon. Earlier in July, massive blazes near Arcachon Bay and Lège-Cap-Ferret had destroyed over 50,000 hectares and displaced as many as 220,000 people.
Wildfires also impacted Germany, Spain, Greece, and the United Kingdom. More than 2,000 residents evacuated from a German village threatened by the Hürtgen forest fire, with unexploded World War II ordnance complicating firefighting efforts. In Spain, military units relocated three 11th-century Aragonese kings from a threatened monastery, while a separate wildfire in southern Spain burned 31,000 hectares. Greek authorities evacuated approximately 500 holidaymakers from beaches threatened by fires near popular resorts, and significant fires affected the West Midlands in the UK. Scientists attribute the increased frequency and intensity of wildfires to climate change, which is causing more extreme weather events and more rapid evaporation of soils and waterways across Europe, where heating occurs at roughly twice the global average rate.
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