00:00Massive wildfires fueled by a brutal summer heat wave raged across southern
00:04Europe on Monday destroying vast swats of land. The escalating environmental
00:09crisis spans Portugal, Spain, France and Greece where hundreds of emergency
00:13personnel are actively battling out-of-control blazes that have already
00:17scorched over 190 square kilometers of territory. In southern France intense
00:22winds and dry air caused a large fire to further increase in size forcing the
00:27evacuation of 10,000 people. Meanwhile given the close proximity to the fires
00:31authorities have banned spectators from the third stage of the Tour de France in the
00:36Pyramid. In Greece a forest fire tore through two factories prompting
00:40authorities to evacuate the surrounding area and warn households to keep their
00:44windows closed. In Spain a fire burned through 2,200 hectares in two days with
00:51firefighting efforts complicated by rising temperatures. In Portugal emergency
00:56services said they had largely brought under control a fire that had destroyed
01:0013,000 hectares of forest and scrubbed land. The early fire season comes amid
01:05compounding climate alarms with forecasters warning that temperatures are
01:09set to breach 40 degrees Celsius again as a new heat wave pushes further north into
01:14the coming weekend.
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