[imagesource:imaggeo]

Europe continues to burn as wildfires spread across Greece, Spain, Italy, Croatia, Turkey, and most of the southern continent, with fears now growing that they will take hold in other areas that have suffered under recent intensely hot and dry weather, creating so-called “flammable landscapes”.

It’s definitely a bad time for the Europeans as stories of escaping tourists and rescue efforts dominate world headlines.

Over the weekend alone, 19 000 people were evacuated from the island of Rhodes, with almost 1 500 tourists flown home already.

Mainly tourists, they were flown back to Britain, Germany, and Italy, in what is described as the largest evacuation ever undertaken in the country. These are scenes better suited to wartime efforts, and it doesn’t appear to be slowing down, with Greece being especially hard hit.

Firefighters have been tackling blazes in 12 villages across the island including Gennadi, Lardos, Kalathos, Laerma, Eleousa and Pefki. On Corfu, nearly 2 500 people were offered shelter, including in stadiums, overnight to escape the fire.

In the latest news from Europe, two pilots were killed when their firefighting aeroplane lost control and crashed on the island of Evia. The water-bombing aeroplane crashed while battling a forest fire near Platanistos, the defence ministry said. Watch the scary BBC footage below:

The rest of Europe also resembles a post-apocalyptic movie as recent footage shows fires lapping at Italy’s Palermo’s international airport. The airport was shut down overnight as fires burned around its perimeter.

Southern Italy has been sweltering through weeks of extreme heat. On Monday, temperatures in Palermo reached a record 47 degrees Celsius.

More than 600 firefighters were dispatched to put out flames in yet another European nation yesterday – Portugal.

A wildfire ignited yesterday and swept across a natural park near the popular holiday destination of Cascais, west of Lisbon. Water-bombing planes joined firefighters and 189 vehicles on the ground, while desperate villagers tried to protect their homes with buckets of water and hosepipes.

The intense heat wave across Europe is literally creating hell on earth, and with more fires popping up everywhere, we can only hope and pray that the people affected are staying safe.

It’s a massive effort across multiple borders, and the devastation has not even been calculated yet. For now, all we can do is watch the tragedy unfold.

[source:inews&bbc&effis]