Madrid, Firefighters were battling blazes across southern Europe on Tuesday as a heatwave sent people hunting for shade and compounded fears about climate change, according to the Spanish News paper Elpais.

In Spain, wildfires were raging in several parts of the country, including the popular southern destination of Málaga. A second fatality was reported on Monday, when a shepherd’s body was found in Sierra de la Culebra, a mountain area in Spain’s northern Zamora province. The first victim was a firefighter who was trapped by the flames on Sunday and a Spanish man trying to protect his town from a wildfire had a close brush with death on Monday when the blaze engulfed his digger, forcing him to run for his life while patting out flames on his clothes. Angel Martin Arjona had been digging a trench to stop the approaching fire from reaching the northwestern town of Tábara when the flames closed in on him.

This past weekend Spanish firefighters were dealing with 37 separate fires, around half of which were still burning out of control. The year 2022 is proving to be the most devastating in 15 years for Spain, with 140,000 hectares of land burnt so far, nearly seven times as much as the annual average for this time of the year. This time in 2021, 30,000 hectares had burnt down. The number of wildfires has also reached a historical high of 301 since January, compared with the historical average of 82.

Source: Oman News Agency