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World

COP27 climate summit: Here’s what to watch

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CNN
 — 

As global leaders converge in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, for the UN’s annual climate summit, researchers, advocates and the United Nations itself are warning the world is still wildly off-track on its goal to halt global warming and prevent the worst consequences of the climate crisis.

Over the next two weeks, negotiators from nearly 200 countries will prod each other at COP27 to raise their clean energy ambitions, as average global temperature has already climbed 1.2 degrees Celsius since the industrial revolution.

They will haggle over ending the use of coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, which has seen a resurgence in some countries amid the war in Ukraine, and try to come up with a system to funnel money to help the world’s poorest nations recover from devastating climate disasters.

But a flood of recent reports have made clear leaders are running out of time to implement the vast energy overhaul needed to keep the temperature from exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius, the threshold scientists have warned the planet must stay under.

Reports from the United Nations and the World Meteorological Association show carbon and methane emissions hit record levels in 2021, and the plans countries have submitted to slash those emissions are beyond insufficient. Given countries’ current promises, Earth’s temperature will climb to between 2.1 and 2.9 degrees Celsius by 2100.

Ultimately, the world needs to cut its fossil fuel emissions nearly in half by 2030 to avoid 1.5 degrees, a daunting prospect for economies still very much beholden to oil, natural gas and coal.

“No country has a right to be delinquent,” US Climate Envoy John Kerry told reporters in October. “The scientists tell us that what is happening now – the increased extreme heat, extreme weather, the fires, the floods, the warming of the ocean, the melting of the ice, the extraordinary way in which life is being affected badly by the climate crisis – is going to get worse unless we address this crisis in a unified, forward-leaning way.”

Here are the top issues to follow at COP27 in Egypt.

Developing and developed countries have for years tussled over the concept of a “loss and damage” fund; the idea which suggests countries causing the most harm with their outrageous planet-warming emissions should pay poorer countries, which have suffered from the resulting climate disasters.

It has been a thorny issue because the richest countries, including the US, don’t want to appear culpable or legally liable to other nations for harm. Kerry, for instance, has tiptoed around the issue, saying the US supports formal talks, but he has not given any indication of what solution the country would sign on to.

Meanwhile, small island nations and others in the Global South are shouldering the impact of the climate crisis, as devastating floods, intensifying storms and record-breaking heat waves wreak havoc.

The deadly flooding in Pakistan this summer, which killed more than 1,500 people, will surely be an example the countries’ negotiators point to. And since September, more than two million people in Nigeria have been affected by the worst flooding there in a decade. At this very moment, Nigerians are drinking, cooking with and bathing in dirty flood water amid serious concerns over waterborne diseases.

It is likely loss and damage will have space on the official COP27 agenda this year. But beyond countries committing to meet and talk about what a potential loss and damage fund would look like, or whether one should even exist, it is unclear what action will come out of this year’s summit.

“Do we expect that we’ll have a fund by the end of the two weeks? I hope, I would love to – but we’ll see how parties deliver on that,” Egypt’s chief climate negotiator Ambassador Mohamed Nasr recently told reporters.

Former White House National Climate Adviser Gina McCarthy told CNN she thinks loss and damage will be the top issue at the UN climate summit this year, and said nations including the US will face some tough questions about their plans to help developing nations already being hit hard by climate disasters.

“It just keeps getting pushed out,” McCarthy said. “There’s need for some real accountability and some specific commitments in the short-term.”

People will be watching to see if the US and China can repair a broken relationship at the summit, a year after the two countries surprised the world by announcing they would work together on climate change.

The newfound cooperation came crashing down this summer when China announced it was suspending climate talks with the US as part of broader retaliation for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan.

Kerry recently said the climate talks between the two countries are still suspended and will likely remain so until China’s president Xi Jinping gives the green light. Kerry and others are watching to see whether China fulfills the promise it made last year to submit a plan to bring down its methane emissions or updates its emissions pledge.

The US and China are the world’s two largest emitters and their cooperation matters, particularly because it can spur other countries to act, too.

Separate from a potential loss and damage fund, there is the overarching issue of so-called global climate finance; a fund rich countries promised to push money into to help the developing world transition to clean energy rather than grow their economies with fossil fuels.

The promise made in 2009 was $100 billion per year, but the world has yet to meet the pledge. Some of the richest countries, including the US, UK, Canada and others, have consistently fallen short of their allocation.

President Joe Biden promised the US would contribute $11 billion by 2024 toward the effort. But Biden’s request is ultimately up to Congress to approve, and will likely go nowhere if Republicans win control of Congress in the midterm elections.

The US is working on separate deals with countries including Vietnam, South Africa and Indonesia to get them to move away from coal and toward renewables. And US officials often stress they want to also unlock private investments to help countries transition to renewables and deal with climate effects.

COP27 is intended to hold countries’ feet to the fire on fossil fuel emissions and gin up new ambition on the climate crisis. Yet reports show we are still off-track to keep global warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius.

A UN report which surveyed countries’ latest pledges found the planet will warm between 2.1 and 2.9 degrees Celsius. Average global temperature has already risen around 1.2 degrees since the industrial revolution.

Records were set last year for all three major greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, according to the World Meteorological Organization.

There is a spot of encouraging news: the adoption of renewable energy and electric vehicles is surging and helping to offset the rise in fossil fuel emissions, according to a recent International Energy Agency report.

But the overall picture from the reports shows there is a need for much more clean energy, deployed swiftly. Every fraction of a degree in global temperature rise will have stark consequences, said Inger Andersen, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program.

“The energy transition is entirely doable, but we’re not on that pathway, and we have procrastinated and wasted time,” Andersen told CNN. “Every digit will matter. Let’s not say ‘we missed 1.5 so let’s settle for 2.’ No. We must understand that every digit that goes up will make our life and the life of our children and grandchildren much more impacted.”

The clock is ticking in another way: Next year’s COP28 in Dubai will be the year nations must do an official stocktake to determine if the world is on track to meet the goals set out in the landmark Paris Agreement.

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US

Heat wave breaks in Southern California with spotty rain

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SAN DIEGO — Southern Californians welcomed cooler temperatures and spotty rain Saturday from a tropical storm veering off the Pacific Coast days after a relentless heat wave nearly overwhelmed the state’s electrical grid.

Officials braced for flooding in coastal and mountain areas from the storm and feared powerful winds could expand the massive Fairview Fire about 75 miles (121 kilometers) southeast of Los Angeles. But minimal flooding was reported early Saturday and crews made significant progress on the fire and said they expected full containment on Monday. More than 10,000 homes and other structures have been threatened by the blaze.

The National Weather Service forecast an end to the grueling heat wave in the Los Angeles area Saturday though heat and wind advisories remained in effect through the evening, and warned of possible flooding in mountain areas and some beach communities.

In San Diego County, inland areas such as Mt. Laguna and Julian received several inches of rain from the storm while coastal communities got less than an inch, the National Weather Service reported.

Hurricane Kay made landfall near Mexico’s Bahia Asuncion in Baja California Sur state Thursday, but it quickly weakened into a tropical storm by the time it reached Southern California. The tropical conditions added a swelter to the heat wave that saw temperatures soar past 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) in many parts of California this week.

Some residents welcomed the respite from unusually high temperatures.

“The heat was killer, so for now this feels good,” Charles Jenkins said as rain fell Friday in San Diego.

With flooding possible, officials in coastal cities posted warning signs in low-lying areas and made sandbags available to the public. In the Orange County community of Seal Beach, a beach parking lot experienced minor flooding Friday from the high tide, police said.

September already has produced one of the hottest and longest heat waves on record for California and some other Western states. Nearly 54 million people were under heat warnings and advisories across the region this week as temperature records were shattered in many areas.

California’s state capital of Sacramento hit an all-time high Tuesday of 116 degrees (46.7 C), breaking a 97-year-old record. Salt Lake City tied its all-time high temperature Wednesday at 107 degrees (41.6 C).

On Tuesday, as air conditioners whirred amid the stifling heat, California set a record for power consumption and authorities nearly instituted rolling blackouts when the electrical grid capacity was at its breaking point.

Scientists say climate change has made the West warmer and drier over the last three decades and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive. In the last five years, California has experienced the largest and most destructive fires in state history.

While firefighters made progress against the Fairview Fire, the fast-moving Mosquito Fire in the foothills east of Sacramento doubled in size Friday to at least 46 square miles (119 square kilometers) and threatened 3,600 homes in Placer and El Dorado counties, while blanketing the region in smoke.

Flames jumped the American River, burning structures in the mountain hamlet of Volcanoville and moving closer to the towns of Foresthill, home to about 1,500 people, and Georgetown, population 3,000. More than 5,700 people in the area have been evacuated, said Placer County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Josh Barnhart.

David Hance slept on the porch of his mother’s Foresthill mobile home when he woke up to a glowing red sky early Wednesday morning and was ordered to evacuate.

“It was actually fricking terrifying, cause they say, ‘Oh yeah, it’s coming closer,’” he said. “It was like sunset in the middle of the night.”

Hance left behind most of his electronic gear, all his clothing and family photos and fled to Auburn, where he found his mother, Linda Hance, who said the biggest stress is wondering: “Is my house still there?”

Organizers of the Tour de Tahoe announced Friday they were canceling the annual 72-mile (115-km) bicycle ride scheduled Sunday around Lake Tahoe because of the heavy smoke from the blaze — more than 50 miles (80 km) away — and noted that cycling is a “heavy cardio activity that does not pair well with terrible air quality.” Last year’s ride was canceled due to smoke from another big fire south of Tahoe.

The Mosquito Fire’s cause remained under investigation. Pacific Gas & Electric said unspecified “electrical activity” occurred close in time to the report of the fire on Tuesday.

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Antczak reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press writers Stefanie Dazio and Christopher Weber in Los Angeles, Noah Berger in Auburn, California, Scott Sonner in Reno, Nevada, and Gillian Flaccus in Portland, Oregon, contributed to this report.

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US

Hurricane Kay will be the closest hurricane to Southern California in 25 years, adding to California’s weather woes

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CNN
 — 

More extreme weather is in the forecast for Southern California this week as a hurricane spins in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Mexico.

As it moves north, it could bring heavy rainfall and the threat of flash flooding. And – far from providing relief from California’s extreme heat – the hurricane’s winds could actually push temperatures higher in some locations.

Hurricane Kay is forecast to track north, parallel to the Baja California peninsula, through Friday. It will then turn westward away from the coast just shy of the US border with Mexico, but not before making the closest pass to Southern California for a hurricane since 1997’s Hurricane Nora.

Kay is expected to remain at hurricane strength until it’s around 250 miles from San Diego, something only four other storms have done since 1950, according to the National Weather Service, before weakening as it moves closer.

But the storm doesn’t need to be strong “for this to be a major concern for Southern California,” said Brandt Maxwell, a San Diego NWS meteorologist.

Forecasters warn the system could amplify the region’s extreme heat woes, rather than relieve them.

Winds could gust more than 60 miles per hour as the system interacts with the mountainous terrain of Southern California. And those winds will be coming from the east, which means they will have a warming effect on coastal cities. As air travels down mountains, it is compressed and its temperature rises.

It will be similar to the Santa Ana wind phenomenon, which typically occurs in the fall and winter.

“We are not calling it Santa Ana winds, but they will have characteristics of them as they pass through canyons and the sloped terrain,” Maxwell told CNN.

The warm, dry winds from the east will increase the region’s fire risk. Temperatures could reach 100 degrees in the coastal areas of San Diego and Orange Counties on Friday.

“This happened in 1984 as a Category 1 Hurricane Marie well southwest of San Diego County forced temperatures to reach 100 in San Diego,” Maxwell said.

Overnight lows could remain in the 80s overnight Thursday and into Friday morning, making sleeping uncomfortable, especially for those without air conditioning.

Then, the relentless heat will “end abruptly and unusually” late Friday, the Los Angeles NWS said, as the tropical system’s cloud cover and rainfall move into the region, drastically reducing temperatures but creating new hazards.

Even as the Southwest has been mired in a multi-year megadrought, Kay’s rainfall could pose a significant flood threat.

“Confidence is rapidly increasing for a significant rainfall event across Southern California, Arizona, and eventually central California and Nevada into Saturday,” forecasters at the Weather Prediction Center wrote Wednesday.

East-facing slopes near the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto mountain ranges could see the heaviest rainfall, with as much as 4 inches possible through Friday. The WPC has issued a rare level 3 out of 4 outlook for excessive rainfall across this region for Friday.

Even though rainfall is desperately needed across parched Southern California, this much rain over a short period of time can cause creeks and rivers to rise rapidly.

“It’s never a good thing to get too much rain all at once, a trait all too common among slow-moving tropical storms,” the WPC said. “Thus, the flash flood potential is summarily also rapidly increasing.”

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US

Northwestern US heat wave could have hottest day on Tuesday

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PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The temperatures in Portland, Oregon, could top 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 Celsius) on Tuesday, making it likely the hottest day of a week-long heat wave for the Pacific Northwest region that rarely sees such scorching weather.

Forecasters issued an excessive heat warning for parts of Oregon and Washington state. Temperatures could hit the 90s (32 C) in Seattle and 110 F (43.3 Celsius) in eastern parts of Oregon and Washington.

While interior parts of the states often experience high temperatures, those kind of hot blasts do not happen nearly as often in Portland and Seattle.

“To have five-day stretches or a weeklong stretch above 90 degrees is very, very rare for the Pacific Northwest,” said Vivek Shandas, professor of climate adaptation at Portland State University.

As the northwestern U.S. heated up, the hot spell on the East Coast appeared to have broken, with few areas east of the Mississippi River under heat advisories.

Philadelphia hit 99 degrees (37 Celsius) Sunday before factoring in humidity. Newark, New Jersey, had its fifth consecutive day of 100 degrees or higher, the longest such streak since records began in 1931. Boston also hit 100 degrees, surpassing the previous daily record high of 98 degrees (36.6 Celsius) set in 1933.

Tuesday’s forecast highs in Philadelphia, New York and Boston were all in the mid-80s (about 29 Celsius).

Residents and officials in the Northwest have been trying to adjust to the likely reality of longer, hotter heat waves following last summer’s deadly “heat dome” weather phenomenon that prompted record temperatures and deaths.

In response, the Portland Housing Bureau that oversees city housing policy will require newly constructed subsidized housing to have air conditioning in the future.

A new Oregon law will require all new housing built after April 2024 to have air conditioning installed in at least one room. The law already prohibits landlords in most cases from restricting tenants from installing cooling devices in their rental units.

The measures were in response to the heat wave in late June and early July 2021, when about 800 people died in Oregon, Washington and British Columbia. The temperature soared to 116 degrees F (46.7 C) in Portland and smashed heat records in cities and towns across the region. Many of those who died were elderly and lived alone.

While temperatures this week are not expected to get that high, the anticipated number of consecutive hot days raised concerns among officials.

Portland, Oregon, could top 100 degrees F (37.8 C) on Tuesday and temperatures across wide swaths of western Oregon and Washington are predicted to be well above historic averages throughout the week.

“It’s nothing we haven’t seen before in terms of the magnitude, but the duration of the event is fairly unusual,” said John Bumgardner, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Portland.

Portland’s Bureau of Emergency Management is opening cooling centers in public buildings and installing misting stations in parks. In Seattle, community centers and libraries will serve as cooling stations.

Multnomah County, which includes Portland, will open four overnight emergency cooling shelters starting Tuesday where people can spend the night.

Officials hope the outreach efforts will help people facing the greatest heat risks — including older people, those living alone, people with disabilities, members of low-income households without air conditioning and people without housing.

Jenny Carver, Multnomah County’s Emergency Manager for the Department of County Human Services, said her work has focused on “ensuring that these sites are as low-barrier as we can make them.”

“We ask folks to just give a name and we don’t check any identification,” said Carver. “We make as many resources available as we can.”

Overnight temperatures in the Pacific Northwest may not go below the 70s, said Treena Jenson, the Portland warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service.

“In the urban areas we have the urban heat island effect that tends to keep temperatures warmer a little bit longer and can cause more heat impacts,” she said.

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Claire Rush is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow her on Twitter.



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World

UK issues “Red Extreme” heat warning, braces for temperature surge  

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An office worker carries a large fan in central London on July 12, 2022. On Friday, the Met Office issued a Red Extreme heat warning for parts of the country.

Yui Mok | PA Images | Getty Images

The U.K. on Friday issued a “Red Extreme” heat warning, with authorities saying temperatures could potentially hit 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) next week.

In a statement, the Met Office said the warning would cover parts of eastern, southeastern, central and northern England on July 18 and 19.

“Exceptional, perhaps record-breaking temperatures are likely early next week, quite widely across the red warning area on Monday, and focused a little more east and north on Tuesday,” Paul Gundersen, chief meteorologist at the Met Office, said.

“Currently there is a 50% chance we could see temperatures top 40°C and 80% we will see a new maximum temperature reached,” Gundersen said.

Friday’s new heat warning came on the same day the U.K. Health Security Agency issued a Level 4 Heat-Health Warning for England. The warning runs between midnight on Monday and midnight on Wednesday next week.

According to the Met Office, Level 4 denotes a national emergency and takes place “when a heatwave is so severe and/or prolonged that its effects extend outside the health and social care system.”

“At this level, illness and death may occur among the fit and healthy, and not just in high-risk groups,” it adds.

People are being advised to take a number of actions to cope with the heat. These include:

  • Looking out for young children and babies, older people, and people with underlying health conditions.
  • Closing curtains in rooms facing the sun.
  • Dressing appropriately in relation to the weather.
  • Avoiding excess alcohol.
  • And drinking “plenty of fluids.”

The U.K.’s record high temperature stands at 38.7 degrees Celsius. That was reached on July 25, 2019, in Cambridge.

Parts of the U.K. have experienced uncomfortably hot weather in recent days, with an Amber Extreme heat warning already issued between July 17 and 19 for a significant chunk of England and Wales.

“Temperatures are expected to start to return closer to normal for the time of year from the middle of next week onwards as cooler air pushes across the country from the west,” the Met Office said.

In January 2022, the World Meteorological Organization said 2021 had been “one of the seven warmest years on record.” The WMO based its finding on the consolidation of six international datasets.

In a statement at the time, the WMO said global warming and what it called “other long-term climate change trends” were “expected to continue as a result of record levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.”

Back in the U.K., Nikos Christidis, climate attribution scientist at the Met Office, said climate change had “already influenced the likelihood of temperature extremes in the UK.”

“The chances of seeing 40°C days in the UK could be as much as 10 times more likely in the current climate than under a natural climate unaffected by human influence,” Christidis added.

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US

Northwest sizzles as heat wave hits many parts of US

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PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Volunteers and county employees set up cots and stacked hundreds of bottles of water in an air-conditioned cooling center in a vacant building in Portland, Oregon, one of many such places being set up as the Northwest sees another stretch of sizzling temperatures.

Scorching weather also hit other parts of the country this week. The weather service said heat advisories and warnings would be in effect from the Midwest to the Northeast and mid-Atlantic through at least Friday.

In Portland, tempertures neared 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 Celsius) on Wednesday and the mercury could soar past the century mark Thursday and Friday. Authorities trying to provide relief to vulnerable people are mindful of a record-shattering heat wave earlier this summer that killed hundreds in the Pacific Northwest.

The high temperatures in Portland, part of a usually temperate region, would break all-time records this week if the late June heat wave had not done so already. Seattle will be cooler than Portland, with temperatures in the mid-90s, but it still has a chance to break records, and many people there, like in Oregon, don’t have air conditioning.

People began coming into a 24-hour cooling center in north Portland before it opened Wednesday.

The first few people in were experiencing homelessness, a population vulnerable to extreme heat. Among them was December Snedecor, who slept two nights in the same center in June when temperatures reached 116 F (47 C).

She said she planned to sleep there again this week because the heat in her tent was unbearable.

“I poured water over myself a lot. It was up in the teens, hundred-and-something heat. It made me dizzy. It was not good,” Snedecor said of the June heat. “I’ve just got to stay cool. I don’t want to die.”

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown has declared a state of emergency and activated an emergency operations center, citing the potential for disruptions to the power grid and transportation. Besides opening cooling centers, city and county governments are extending public library hours and waiving bus fare for those headed to cooling centers. A 24-hour statewide help line will direct callers to the nearest cooling shelter and offer safety tips.

Emergency officials have sent alerts to phones, said Dan Douthit, spokesman for the Portland Bureau of Emergency Management.

The back-to-back heat waves, coupled with a summer that’s been exceptionally warm and dry overall, are pummeling a region where summer highs usually drift into the 70s or 80s. Intense heat waves and a historic drought in the American West reflect climate change that is making weather more extreme.

The June heat in Oregon, Washington and British Columbia killed hundreds of people and served as a wake-up call for what’s ahead in a warming world. It was virtually impossible without human-caused climate change, a detailed scientific analysis found.

Even younger residents struggled with the heat in June and dreaded this week’s sweltering temperatures.

Katherine Morgan, 27, has no air conditioning in her third-floor apartment and can’t afford a window unit on the money she makes working at a bookstore and as a hostess at a brewery.

She’ll have to walk to work Thursday, the day when temperatures could again soar.

“All my friends and I knew that climate change was real, but it’s getting really scary because it was gradually getting hot — and it suddenly got really hot, really fast,” Morgan said.

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Follow Flaccus on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/gflaccus.



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World

Thousands more flee fires in Greece amid heat wave

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ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Thousands of people in Greece fled to safety from a wildfire north of Athens early Friday as firefighters waged an overnight battle to stop the flames from reaching populated areas, electricity installations and historic sites.

On the nearby island of Evia, the Greek coast guard mounted a massive operation with patrol boats and private vessels to evacuate hundreds of residents and vacationers by sea as dozens of fires burned across the country for a third day amid a protracted heat wave.

One of the most severe blazes tore through forest areas 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) north of the capital, destroying more homes. Ground crews of several hundred firefighters dug fire breaks and hosed the flames.

Traffic was halted on the country’s main highway connecting Athens to northern Greece as crews tried to use the road as a firebreak before water-dropping planes resumed flights at first light. But sparks and burning pine cones carried the fire across the highway at several points.

Several firefighters and volunteers were hospitalized with burns, health officials said. Health Minister Vassilis Kikilias said nine people had been taken by ambulance to hospitals in Athens from the fire north of the Greek capital, three of them suffering breathing problems, while 11 more were being treated in a health center on Evia.

“We are going through the 10th day of a major heat wave affecting our entire country, the worst heat wave in terms of intensity and duration of the last 30 years,” Fire Service Brig. Gen. Aristotelis Papadopoulos said.

In the Drosopigi area north of Athens, resident Giorgos Hatzispiros went Friday morning to check on his house after being ordered to evacuate the previous afternoon. Only the charred walls of the single-story home remained, along with his two children’s bicycles, somehow unscathed in a storeroom. Inside, smoke rose from a still-smoldering bookcase.

“Nothing is left,” Hatzispiros said. He urged his mother, who was accompanying him, to leave, to spare her the sight of their destroyed home.

In southern Greece, nearly 60 villages and settlements were evacuated Thursday and early Friday, with weather conditions expected to worsen as strong winds were predicted in much of the country.

Fires were raging on the island of Evia, northeast of Athens, and at multiple locations in the southern Peloponnese region where a blaze was stopped before reaching monuments at Olympia, birthplace of the ancient Olympic Games.

A summer palace outside Athens once used by the former Greek royal family was also spared.

In Evia, the coast guard said its patrol boats, private vessels and tourist boats had evacuated 631 people overnight and by early Friday morning from beaches on the northeastern coast of the island. Coast guard patrols were continuing along the coast.

Fire crews, water-dropping planes, helicopters and vehicles from France, Romania, Sweden and Switzerland were arriving Friday and through the weekend to help. Fire crews and planes from Cyprus were already in Greece, as the European Union stepped up support to fire-hit countries in southeast Europe. The heat wave also has fueled deadly fires in Turkey and across the region.

“Our priority is always the protection of human life, followed by the protection of property, the natural environment and critical infrastructure. Unfortunately, under these circumstances, achieving all these aims at the same time is simply impossible,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in a televised address Thursday night. The wildfires, he said, display “the reality of climate change.”

More than 1,000 firefighters, joined by the army and teams of volunteers, as well as nearly 20 water-dropping planes and helicopters were fighting five major fires across the country, the fire department said.

In 2018, more than 100 people died when a fast-moving forest fire engulfed a seaside settlement east of Athens. Some of the casualties drowned trying to escape by sea from the choking smoke and flames after becoming trapped on a beach.

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Becatoros reported from Argostoli, Greece. Thanassis Stavrakis in Drosopigi, Greece, contributed.

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