Croatian wildfire kills one, injures 42 as Europe battles record heat

A body was found in the smoldering remains of a Croatian wildfire Thursday night, marking the first confirmed death as flames tore through the coastal towns of Lokva Rogoznica and Omiš. By Friday afternoon, the toll had grown to 42 injured, seven of them in life-threatening condition. Four of the most critically hurt were airlifted to specialist hospitals in Zagreb. More than a thousand people—residents and tourists alike, including visitors from Hungary and the Czech Republic—were forced to flee their homes as the fire raced through the region. Prime Minister Andrej Plenković called it "one of the worst fires in recent years," acknowledging the scale of what his country was facing.

But Croatia was not alone. Across Europe, a historic heatwave was turning the continent into kindling. Western Europe's average high on Friday reached 31.2 degrees Celsius—eight degrees above the 1961-1990 baseline. Three out of five Europeans were enduring temperatures of at least 30 degrees; roughly 150 million people were sweltering through 35 degrees or worse. The European Union's climate service warned of "very extreme" conditions stretching across central and eastern Europe, with dangerous heat pockets over southern Britain, Ireland, northern France, and southern Sweden through mid-August. The entire continent was running a fever.

Britain, which had never seen anything approaching the devastation ravaging Spain and France, was nonetheless breaking its own records. Wildfires in England and Wales had already exceeded the previous year's total of 1,017 blazes—and it was only mid-August. The fire chiefs' council chair said the wildfire season now seemed to stretch into November, meaning the country was on track for not just a record year but a "considerable increase" on anything previously recorded. On Thursday, west London had hit 38.1 degrees Celsius, the hottest day of the year. Meanwhile, England had received just four millimeters of rain so far in August—six percent of the long-term average. July had been the driest month on record for the country since measurements began in 1836.

In the West Midlands, firefighters battled blazes that witnesses described as an "inferno." Around fifty residents were evacuated from Gorleston Road, where terraced houses were engulfed. Andrew Reynolds, 42, watched his mother lose everything she owned in a house she had lived in for 34 years. His grandmother's possessions—a century of family photographs, irreplaceable heirlooms—were stored in the loft. "It's all gone," he said. Six firefighters were hospitalized with smoke inhalation and heat exhaustion. Across the region, paramedics treated 54 patients, hospitalizing 19 of them.

France, meanwhile, was grappling with a different kind of crisis. Since July 1st, authorities had arrested 474 people on suspicion of starting wildfires—183 of them minors. About seventy percent were suspected of deliberately setting fires; the rest had done so accidentally. A 15-year-old boy was detained in connection with a blaze near Bordeaux airport that killed two firefighters in July. In the Landes region, more than 500 people were evacuated as a precaution while firefighters tackled an active blaze. For the first time, French emergency services deployed a new water-bombing helicopter on loan from Australia—a Chinook CH-47D capable of dropping 11,300 liters of water and refilling within 90 seconds.

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, standing in Stourbridge amid the smoke and ash, warned the nation bluntly: "Britain is a tinderbox right now." He said 37 fires were smoldering across the country and urged people to behave responsibly through the weekend. The government issued a temporary ban on the sale of disposable barbecues, deeming them a "significant risk to the public" under current drought and heatwave conditions. Burnham announced that military personnel would be deployed to support firefighting services, which were stretched thin managing multiple simultaneous incidents. He acknowledged that the fire service had lost resources in recent years and committed to convening a summit after summer to ensure proper funding and equipment—including permanent aerial support if needed.

Burnham also flagged a darker irony: after fire could come floods. El Niño patterns suggested Britain might face a wet autumn and winter, meaning the country could swing from one extreme to another. For now, though, Europe remained locked in heat, and the fire season showed no sign of ending.