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01:56

Wildfires raging across southern Turkey force residents to flee – video

Turkey
Turkish fires sweeping through tourist areas are the hottest on
record

Jonathan Watts
@jonathanwatts
Fri 30 Jul 2021 18.13 BST
The heat intensity of wildfires in Turkey on Thursday was four times higher than anything on record for the
nation, according to satellite data passed on to the Guardian.

At least four people were killed by blazes that swept through the tourist regions of Antalya and Muğla,
forcing thousands of holidaymakers to be evacuated from their hotels by a flotilla of boats.

Conditions there and at the sites of dozens of other blazes throughout the country were tinder dry. Turkey’s
60-year temperature record had been broken the previous week when Cizre, a town in the south-east,
registered 49.1C.

After deadly heatwaves in the Americas, floods in Europe and China, and fires in Siberia, the scenes of
destruction in Turkey add to concerns about the growing ferocity of extreme weather in a climate-disrupted
world.
 Fires rage in the hills behind Icmeler Bay, in Muğla province. Photograph: Alina Kvasha/TASS

Local media published photos of popular Aegean Sea resorts surrounded by burning hillsides and forest and
farmland reduced to ash. At Bodrum, in Muğla province, 80 hectares (197 acres) were burnt despite
firefighting efforts on the ground and by air. The flames cut off two hotels, forcing the evacuation of more
than 4,000 tourists and staff by coastguard and fishing vessels.

Wildfires are common in Turkey during the summer, but the blazes over the past two days have been
exceptional. Satellite analysis by the EU’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service show the heat
intensity of the country’s fires on Thursday reached about 20 gigawatts, four times higher than the previous
daily maximum.

“Those numbers are off the scale compared to the last 19 years,” said Mark Parrington, a senior scientist in
the EU’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service. He said the smoke from fires near Antalya and Mersin
was now drifting to Cyprus.

Sunbathers watch as a helicopter carries water from the sea to dump on fires near Marmaris. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Residents of affected towns told reporters they had never seen anything like it. Ibrahim Aydın, a farmer, said
he had lost all his livestock and nearly been killed while fighting the flames. “Everything I had was burned to
the ground. I lost lambs and other animals,” he told the Daily Sabah. “This is not normal. This was like hell.”

Throughout the country, firefighters battled more than 50 blazes. Dozens were hospitalised by the fumes. As
news spread, #PrayForTurkey was trending on Twitter with images of devastation and maps showing the
disaster,” he tweeted.

A wildfire on the southern Turkish coast near Manavgat, Antalya province. Photograph: Kaan Soyturk/Reuters

This year looks likely to continue the trend. The World Meteorological Organisation tweeted that extreme
heat is hitting the wider Mediterranean region with temperatures forecast to rise well above 40C in inland
areas of Italy, Greece, Tunisia and Turkey. It has urged preparations to prevent health and water supply
problems.

The heatwave in southern Europe is expected to linger well into next week with some forecasts suggesting it
could be among the most severe on record. The Turkish meteorological office sees little likelihood of respite
in the week ahead. Next week, Ankara and several other sites are set for temperatures more than 12C
higher than the August average.