Gale-force winds drove wildfires across Greece on Saturday, forcing evacuations northwest of Athens as conditions worsened again in parts of Spain and France. [1]

Near Porto Germeno on the Gulf of Corinth, first responder Giorgos Doulas said gusts exceeded 73 kph and the fire's direction could not be fixed. Authorities ordered people out of Agia Paraskevi, Kryo Pigadi, and Agios Nektarios. [1]

Spain had already burned more than 70,000 hectares in the Madrid and Ávila fires before those blazes were called stabilized. Europe's summer followed successive record heat waves and little rain. [1]

The death ledger is the part the fire maps underplay. Austria logged 395 heat-related deaths in June. Britain estimated 2,877 heat-related deaths so far this year. France reported 5,764 excess deaths between June 17 and July 2. Germany's RKI put heat-linked deaths near 9,800. [1][2]

A new outbreak near Madrid's San Juan reservoir was put out Friday even as France's Aude department posted drought photos of smoke over Carcassonne. The EU's forest-fire system had already shown 2026 burnt area running ahead of the same date in 2025, the worst full year on record. [1][2]

This paper's Greek fire briefs this week have been about helicopters, unexploded ordnance, and three dead firefighters. The climate brief is the weather that made those accidents more likely. Heat is not color on a map. It is the fuel.

-- KENJI NAKAMURA, Tokyo