Rome: A major heatwave is expected to hit Italy this week, which has been forecast to be the hottest so far, authorities and local media reports said.
Wildfires continued to be rage across several southern regions, including in Calabria’s San Luca area where they were threatening hectares of ancient beech forests, reports Xinhua news agency.
On Monday, the country’s Civil Protection Department issued a severe alert for the entire territory, and warned the worst situation might concern the major islands of Sicily and Sardinia, where “maximum temperatures could near 45 degrees (Celsius) in some inland areas on August 10-11”, reports Xinhua news agency.
Temperature could exceed 36-37 degrees in the northern Po Valley, and reach 28-30 degrees at altitudes as high as 1,500 meters.
“Our country will be hit by very high temperatures in the coming days, which will facilitate the spread of bushfires,” the Department warned.
In a statement, Department chief Fabrizio Curcio said the weekly forecast would require the “greatest attention (from emergency services) and the utmost cooperation and caution (from citizens)”.
“It is crucial to avoid any behaviour that could prompt new fires and also to immediately report even the smallest bushfires,” Curcio stressed.
Two people died in a town on the slopes of Calabria’s Aspromonte mountains on August 6, after being engulfed by fire.
After Calabrian authorities appealed to the central government, Prime Minister Mario Draghi issued an emergency decree allowing the deployment of the national Civil Protection System.
Another 20 operations, some threatening residential areas, were launched, requiring the intervention of Canadair water-dropping planes over Sicily, Sardinia, Basilicata and Campania in the south, and central Lazio, Umbria, Molise, and Abruzzo, according to the Department.
This summer has so far proved very challenging for Italian firefighters, who managed 44,442 operations against wildfires between June 15 and August 8 compared to 26,158 in the same period of 2020.
A similar emergency level dated back to the summer of 2017, when wildfires prompted over 45,000 operations across the country.
Meanwhile, Italy’s agriculture sector struggled to cope with the high temperatures, the national farmers’ association Coldiretti warned on Monday.
“The intense heat and the lack of rainfall are burning fruits and vegetables on the fields… The unbearable heatwave is destroying crops plus causing a significant fall of olives from the trees, and stressing animals in the stables with a (consequent) collapse in milk production.”
According to Coldiretti, extreme weather events related to climate change, including the current heatwave, would have caused damage worth over 1 billion euros to agriculture so far in 2021.
