The most damaging flames had spread across Europe this year since 2006 as a result of the year's record-breaking temperatures. The average from 2006 to 2021 was actually doubled.
More than a thousand French firefighters, trucks, and waterbombing planes kept showing up on Saturday, even though about 10,000 people had already been forced to leave their houses and a section of roadway had been closed.
The European Forest Fire Information System (Effis), which calculated that 659,541 hectares (1.6 million acres) of land burned across the continent between January and mid-August - 56% higher than the previous record in 2017 which reached 988,087 - support claims that the continent now burns an area equivalent to one-fifth of Belgium.
The continent is heading toward what experts predict will be "a record year for wildfire destruction" as a result of recent heat waves and an extended period of drought.
Experts predict that more than 1 million hectares could be destroyed by flames this year given the current patterns.
The coordinator for Effis, Jess San-Miguel, stated that "the scenario in terms of drought and exceptionally high temperatures have hit all of Europe this year and the overall situation in the region is frightening, while we are still in the middle of the fire season."
Since 2010, fires have been raging in central and northern nations that "usually do not experience fires in their territory," despite the fact that historically, fire seasons in Europe have been "driven mostly by countries in the Mediterranean region," according to San-Miguel.
The Inquirer reported that this year's fire is bigger than all previous wildfires in the EU and is four times the historical average, setting the stage for record-breaking wildfire destruction in 2022.
Thousands of firefighters have been prepared to put out the biggest wildfires in modern history since longer and more regular heatwaves are predicted to be on the horizon.
With a loss of 244,924 hectares, Spain has been the country most affected so far, followed by Romania (150,528) and Portugal (77,292).
In the meantime, France burned more than 60,000 hectares, which is just half as much as the 43,600 hectares it lost in 2019, its previous record year.
Much of western Europe was in "severe" or "very extreme" fire hazard, according to the EU's Copernicus atmosphere monitoring service (Cams), which produces the satellite data used by Effis.
According to the service, continuing fires were substantially more intense in France, Spain, and Portugal than they typically were in July and August, and wildfire carbon emissions smashed all previous records in France and Spain.
