An elderly man and a forestry worker died on Thursday in wildfires in Turkey, as firefighters battled high winds fanning two blazes in the western province of İzmir.
Turkey, which was spared the recent heatwaves that gripped the rest of southern Europe, has been battling the effects of a long-term drought brought on by climate change.
One elderly victim died in a fire near Ödemiş, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) east of İzmir, in one of three villages evacuated in the area, an opposition lawmaker told Halk TV.
“The village was evacuated but an elderly, bedridden patient could not be saved,” said Salih Uzun, a lawmaker in İzmir for the main opposition Republican People’s Party.
A forest worker in the same area died as he battled the blazes, the country’s agriculture minister, İbrahim Yumaklı, said on X.
Another major fire was out of control near Çeşme, some 80 kilometers west of the city of İzmir, which began late on Wednesday and forced the evacuation of a further three villages.
“The biggest problem is the wind speed of up to 85 kilometers per hour (53 miles per hour) which is causing the fire to spread very quickly. And it constantly changes direction,” İzmir Governor Süleyman Elban said.
“So the intervention from both land and air is seriously challenging,” he told reporters at the scene, saying the flames had cut off the main highway from İzmir, Turkey’s third largest city.
In both places, a total of “nine planes, 22 helicopters and 1,100 firetrucks and other vehicles are intensively fighting the fires,” the governor told reporters.
He said both fires in the province as well as those that began at the weekend and were brought under control “were caused by power cables.”
Fires contained in Antalya, İstanbul
Earlier, two other fires broke out — one in the southern resort of Antalya and the second in İstanbul’s Sultan Gazi Forest.
They were quickly contained by firefighters, officials said.
Footage from Antalya showed flames in a forested area near a residential area in Lara, a popular tourist resort with many large hotels, but a municipal official told Agence France-Presse it was under control.
Since Friday hundreds of fires have been reported across drought-hit Turkey, fueled by high winds.
On Monday more than 50,000 people were evacuated, mostly in the Izmir area but also from the southern province of Hatay, the AFAD disaster management agency said.
According to figures on the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) website, there have been 90 wildfires in Turkey so far this year that have ravaged more than 35,082 hectares (86,689 acres) of land.
The figure on Monday was nearly 15,000 hectares destroyed in 65 fires.
Citing forestry ministry figures, metrologist İsmail Küçük told AFP that “90 percent of forest fires” were due to man-made causes.
Power cables posed a risk if they were not properly maintained, said Küçük, secretary general of Turkey’s chamber of metrology engineers.
In some regions, cables broke easily because they had not been maintained since electricity distribution companies had been privatized, he said.
Experts say human-driven climate change is causing more frequent and more intense wildfires and other natural disasters and have warned Turkey to take measures to tackle the problem.
© Agence France-Presse