A plane fighting wildfires in Greece crashed yesterday as large swaths of the Mediterranean are battered by an intense heatwave and Algeria struggles to control a blaze that has claimed at least 34 lives.
The plane, which was leaking water, crashed on a hillside near the town of Karistos on the Greek island of Evia, east of Athens. The pilot and co-pilot of the plane were killed, the aviation authorities announced yesterday.
Greece has been particularly hard hit by the fires, with authorities evacuating more than 20 people from homes and resorts south of the island of Rhodes in recent days.
Another fire caused the temporary closure of Palermo airport on the southern Italian island of Sicily yesterday. In northern Italy, there was a sudden change in the weather, and an intense storm overnight toppled roofs and downed trees in cities including Milan, Reuters reported.
In the northern provinces of Monza and Brescia, a woman and a 16-year-old girl were killed after trees fell on them, while a teenager was seriously injured when he was hit by a branch in the Veneto region.
In the south of the country, a 98-year-old man, who was immobile, died when a fire engulfed his house.
The Italian government has prepared emergency aid measures for regions hit by extreme weather conditions, with the northern region of Lombardy, including Milan, estimated to have suffered over €100 million in damage.
Residents of Milan yesterday saw the damage after a dramatic night storm and winds of over 100 kilometers per hour. "Everything happened around 4 or 5 am this morning, it was very short but very intense, it felled trees..." eyewitness Roberto Solfrizzo told Reuters.
Nearly 100 firefighters were using helicopters to tackle the blaze in the French municipalities of Cannier-sur-Mer and Villeneuve-Loubet, near Nice international airport, officials said last night.
Extreme weather conditions have wreaked havoc across the planet, with record temperatures in China, the United States and southern Europe causing devastating forest fires, water shortages and a spike in hospital admissions.
According to a study by the World Meteorological Association, a global team of scientists examining the role of climate change in extreme weather, this month's events would be "extremely rare" without the influence of human-induced climate change.
"Such high temperatures in North America and Europe would be practically impossible without the effects of climate change," said Izidine Pinto of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, one of the authors of the study. "In China, it was about 50 times more likely to happen compared to the past."
The team behind the study estimated that rising concentrations of greenhouse gases made Europe's heatwave 2,5 degrees warmer than it would have been otherwise. They also increased the heat wave in North America by two and that in China by one degree Celsius.
Temperatures in the southern parts of Europe also exceeded 45 degrees yesterday, while it was even hotter in the north of Africa. In some cities of Tunisia, the temperature reached 49 degrees.
Algeria struggled yesterday to contain devastating forest fires along its Mediterranean coast, which claimed at least 34 lives. The fires were fanned by strong winds and also forced the closure of two border crossings with neighboring Tunisia.
Saving the hotel
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said that his country is one of those on the front line in the fight against climate change, but that there is no simple solution to stop the consequences. "I will say the obvious: the whole world is facing this, especially the Mediterranean as the focus of climate change, there is no magic defense mechanism, and if there was, we would have already applied it," Mitsotakis said.
The fires will deal a blow to the tourism industry, which is the mainstay of the Greek economy. Tourism accounts for 18% of gross domestic product and one in five jobs, with an even higher share on islands like Rhodes.
Lefteris Laoudikos, whose family owns a small hotel in the Rhodes resort of Kiotari, one of the epicenters of the fire at the weekend, said their 200 guests, mostly from Germany, Britain and Poland, had been evacuated with help rent-a-car vehicles.
He said his father, a cousin and two other people put out the fire using water from a nearby tank. “My father saved the hotel. I called to him, but he didn't want to leave. He told me: If I leave, there will be no hotel'”.
Malta, another popular Mediterranean holiday destination, experienced a series of power outages across the country, affecting its largest hospital.
'Silent killer'
Scientists have described extreme heat as a "silent killer" that hits the poor, the elderly and those with pre-existing medical conditions particularly hard.
Research published earlier this month suggests that as many as 61.000 people may have died in Europe's heat waves last summer, suggesting that preparedness efforts are not working.
Scientists also point out that the heat has also caused extensive damage to crops and loss of livestock. US corn and soybean crops, Mexican livestock, southern European olives, as well as Chinese cotton, were severely affected.
Italian government officials and trade unions said Italy was preparing special measures to help construction and agricultural firms keep workers at home during an intense summer heat wave.
Labor Minister Marina Calderone told the unions that Djordje Meloni's government will probably discuss changes to the working regime at today's meeting.
"We welcome Minister Calderona's statement announcing a new regime ... in the construction and agricultural sectors," Massimo Blazi, head of the CISAL union, said at the end of the meeting.
Under Italian regulations, companies can apply for temporary layoffs - usually due to business decline - for a maximum of 52 weeks over two years, or 90 days a year in the agricultural sector.
The new decree will allow construction and agricultural firms, which have been hit hard by the heat wave because their workers cannot work from home, to use this instrument without it being counted against their overall limit, officials said.
Although these measures represent a cost to the exchequer, the government believes that this can be covered by funds already earmarked for the regular redundancy programme, which is not expected to be fully utilised.
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