Smoke billowed over the forests of Slovenia and Albania on Wednesday (July 20) as Europe’s heatwave spread north-east.
Slovenia was struggling to contain the wildfire due to low water supplies and a lack of extinguishing equipment, but the situation had calmed down, the defence minister Marjan Sarec told the press.
“The problem is because these fires are popping up around Europe, the EU’s help system is overloaded,” said Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob, adding that Slovenia was luckily equipped with a “big army of firefighters” however.
Protectively, around 200 people were evacuated from their homes in Mirna, Slovenia because of the smoke.
The ground of the once lush Berzane forest near Lezha, in Albania was left littered with cinders and fallen trees in the aftermath of a wildfire.
After several refuelling stops at the river Mat, military helicopters carrying water successfully extinguished the fire.
No wildfire fatalities have been reported in Slovenia or Albania.
A brutal heatwave with spikes well above 40 Celsius (104F) settled over southern Europe last week, part of a global pattern of rising temperatures, widely attributed by scientists and climatologists to human activity.
(Reuters)