Live: Next 12 hours will be ‘decisive’ for ending wildfire near Madrid, Spanish PM Sanchez says

Next 12 hours will be ‘decisive’ for ending Madrid region fire, Spanish PM Sanchez says

Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said Wednesday that efforts to extinguish a major wildfire near Madrid were progressing “favourably” and the next 12 hours would be “decisive”.

“Things are progressing favourably, with the greatest of caution,” Sanchez told reporters in televised comments at a command centre near the fire zone. “I believe the next 12 hours will be very important – they will be decisive for the work of consolidating the work that the civil protection service has done.”

Tens of thousands of Spanish evacuees return home

Thousands of people evacuated in Spain during massive wildfires started to return home on Wednesday as the government said they were working to contain some of the worst forest fires in the country’s modern history.

Late on Tuesday, the government had lifted evacuation orders on more than a dozen municipalities in the Madrid and Avila areas, the epicentre of wildfires that had forced tens of thousands to be displaced.

“24,000 evacuated individuals have been able to return to their homes, and another 20,000 have been released from confinement in the Community of Madrid,” government delegate Francisco Martin Aguirre said on X late Tuesday.

“Work continues to consolidate the progress made throughout the day in tackling the fire. The return of evacuees is proceeding without incident.”

Wildfire response must evolve to keep pace with climate change, EU says

The European Union’s response to wildfires needs more funding, greater focus on forest management and enhanced education about fire risk as the climate changes, the head of the bloc’s crisis ​response said.

“Climate change ‌is accelerating. So our response must evolve just as quickly,” Hadja Lahbib, the EU’s ⁠Crisis Management Commissioner, told Reuters. “We must prepare for risks before disasters strike, and not simply react afterwards.”

Lahbib said it was not enough to just purchase more firefighting equipment, and that countries ​should also be investing more of their EU funding in forest management practices that ‌reduce wildfire risk, and should better educate citizens on “what behaviour they absolutely must avoid”, to reduce fire risk.

Around 90 percent of wildfires are started by human activities, such as campfires or discarded cigarettes.

Wildfire in southwest France ‘still stable’, regional authorities say

The massive wildfire that has burned some 42,000 hectares in France’s southwest Gironde region over the past week is “still stable” this morning after a second “quiet” night, according to the department’s prefecture.

The prefecture said that several flare-ups had been quickly put out.

“The area burned has not changed,” the prefecture said, while stressing that weather conditions including rising temperatures and dry winds remain “unfavourable” on Wednesday.