An approaching wildfire in eastern Spain caused a train driver to stop and prepare to change directions to avoid the flames. However, several passengers on the train panicked when they saw the fire and broke windows in an effort to escape the carriage as flames quickly approached the tracks – despite the driver urging them to stay on board.
At least ten passengers were injured. Three people were seriously burned by the wildfires, with one passenger airlifted to hospital for treatment in Valencia, the regional health authorities said. More than eight others were slightly injured.
Horrifying footage taken by a passenger on the train showed the flames roaring up into the sky just yards away from the windows on Tuesday in the municipality of Bejis, north of Valencia city.
The same wildfire sent four firefighters running for their lives on Wednesday, as towering flames from the fire roared behind them.
Three firefighters were injured by flames and several villages in the area were evacuated, local emergency services said on Twitter.
The wildfire in Bejis is one of two still raging out of control in eastern Spain. South of Valencia city, a bigger fire around the Val d’Ebo area has forced more than 1,500 people to evacuate towns and villages since the weekend.
Climate change has left parts of the Iberian peninsula at their driest in 1,200 years, according to a study published last month in the Nature Geoscience journal.
Valencia regional president Ximo Puig said on Wednesday that the Bejis fire had a perimeter of some 30 miles and had burned some 10,00 acres.
He said the Val d’Ebo blaze had a perimeter of 50 miles and had scorched some 28,000 acres.
The European Forest Fire Information System says 679,000 acres have burned in wildfires so far this year in Spain, more than four times the country’s annual average of 165,000 acres since 2006, when records began.
Elsewhere in Spain, there are warnings of torrential rain for tomorrow which could cause flash floods in the country.
In neighbouring Portugal, more than 1,200 firefighters struggled Wednesday to control a huge forest fire in the Serra da Estrela park near Orjais, which resumed just days after being brought under control.
Strong winds have been hampering attempts to combat the spread of the fire, one of 195 that have ravaged some 92,000 hectares of land across Portugal this year amid record temperatures.
The fire in the UNESCO-designated park restarted Tuesday after being brought under control five days earlier, and is estimated to have already consumed around 25,000 hectares (62,000 acres) of land.
It is still posing a sizeable challenge even if “90 percent of this fire’s perimeter is now under control”, said civil protection agency head Andre Fernandes.
July proved to be Portugal’s hottest in nearly a century, with the country battling its worst forest fires since 2017 when around 100 lives were lost.
Smoke from the Portuguese fire reached Spain’s capital, Madrid, about 400 kilometers (240 miles) to the east, on Tuesday.
Fashion designer Giorgio Armani and dozens of others were forced to flee from their vacation villas overnight as firefighters worked to extinguish the remnants of two wildfires on the Sicilian island of Pantelleria on Thursday.
A photo shows flames that appear to encroach on Armani’s villa, but his press office said they stopped short of the property. Armani and guests evacuated to a boat in the harbor overnight.
Scientists say human-induced climate change is making extreme weather events, including heatwaves and droughts, more frequent and intense. They in turn increase the risk of fires, which emit climate-heating greenhouse gases.
Fires have blazed across Europe, particularly in France, Greece and Portugal, making 2022 a record year for wildfires on the continent.