Heatwave fuels Europe wildfires

Inferno forces thousands of people from their homes

BARCELONA:

Hundreds of firefighters across southern Europe battled wildfires Sunday that forced thousands of people from their homes and led officials to ban spectators from a stage of the Tour de France cycling race, as temperatures rose again in the heatwave-scarred region.

The infernos have devastated more than 19,000 hectares (42,000 acres) of land -- an area more than twice the size of Manhattan -- across Portugal, Spain, France and Greece, with temperatures predicted to reach 40C in places.

Some 5,000 were being evacuated from their homes near the city of Perpignan in southwestern France as firefighters tried to control a blaze that has devoured 1,650 hectares, Pierre Regnault de la Mothe, the regional prefect, told reporters.

"We started seeing smoke around 10:30 pm, then it kept coming closer and closer. Someone from the town hall knocked on our door around 1:00 am to tell us to leave," said Charlotte Pignol, 30, who was evacuated from her home overnight in the area.

"There were fire trucks everywhere, and the smell of smoke was overwhelming," she said.

The blazes come shortly after a heatwave in June, one of Europe's worst, during which thousands of excess deaths were registered and which would have been "virtually impossible" without climate change, the World Weather Attribution group of scientists said.

With the mercury set to rise again in the coming days, authorities expressed alarm that the annual summer wildfire season had started a month early.

"Climate change is here, we are

living the consequences and it is only the start of July," said French fire service Colonel Eric Belgioino as he appealed to people near the Pyrenees inferno to take precautions to avoid starting fires.

"The season is going to be long for the soldiers fighting fires. You have to help us," he pleaded.

In France, officials announced that Monday's third stage of the Tour de France cycling race through the Pyrenees would take place without spectators who normally line the routes of the storied competition.

The stage, which sees cyclists ride from Spain into France and on French territory, "will be limited to the passage of the riders only and the vehicles essential to organizing the race," the regional prefect de la Mothe told reporters.

"The public is asked not to go

near the route or to the finish area," he said.

"In other words, and I regret having to say this, it will be, in France at least, a stage of the Tour de France without spectators."