Heatwave turns southeastern Europe into tinderbox as fires rage

ROME (AFP) - Southeastern Europe was a tinderbox yesterday in the grip of an unrelenting heatwave that has claimed hundreds of lives as wildfires swept Italy and bit into a national park in Slovakia.

Italy was sweltering under temperatures close to 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) in places yesterday and suffering devastating wildfires in central and southern regions.
 
"We've had 85 calls so far already for airborne intervention against fires," a public safety official told AFP in the afternoon as fires raged in the Abruzzo, Latium, Calabria, Sicily and Sardinia regions.

More than 5,000 hectares (12,500 acres) of farmland has been destroyed, worth some one billion euros (1.4 billion dollars), according to the Italian Farmers Confederation.

In southeastern Apulia on Tuesday, two people were burned alive in their car near the Adriatic coastal town of Peschici, while on Monday a pilot died when his Canadair crashed while he was fighting a fire in the mountainous Abruzzo.

"The alert remains high across the country," fire services spokesman Luca Cari told AFP earlier. "We have doubled the personnel rotations to ensure a stronger presence ... and we have transferred personnel from the north of the country to the south to help us."

In Romania meanwhile, authorities said the heatwave-related death toll rose to 33 with three more people succumbing on Tuesday.

In the capital Bucharest where temperatures reached 37 degrees Celsius (99 Fahrenheit) more than 170 people fainted in the street and ambulance services received a record of more than 1,200 calls over the past 24 hours, according to the Mediafax news agnecy.

Power flickered on and off in Bucharest where air conditioners were working overtime.

Some 30 people died in a heatwave last month in Romania.