Europe Is Burning
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
I'm Winna Liu. I write the game Connections, one of the puzzles from New York Times games, and I love horror movies. I love my dog, and I love trying to trick you. I'm Tracy Bennett. I get to pick the wordle word every day, which is not as easy as it sounds. A fun fact about me is that I am descended from a witch who was put on trial in Salem. New York Times games are made by people, like the ones you just heard from. Go to nytimes.com slash games to start playing today.
From The New York Times, I'm Zolan Kano-Youngs, filling in as host. This is The Daily.
Tonight, relentless walls of flame raging across Europe.
Firefighters say it's David versus Goliath.
A week after it started, they're still struggling to contain massive wildfires burning out of control in France and Spain. This summer, wildfires have been raging across Europe, with France and Spain particularly hard hit.
More than 360,000 residents in Taurus have now been evacuated.
It feels like we're in a war zone. The words of one woman living near Bordeaux as flames get ever closer.
Hundreds of thousands of acres incinerated, villages destroyed, and entire communities upended by the fires.
Police come and started screaming in the neighborhood, like, you have to get out, get out, you have 20 minutes, evacuate.
Today, I talked to my colleagues Chico Harlan and Mark Landler about why this fire season has been especially devastating for Europe, and how, when it comes to climate change, the continent is grappling with just how much it may need to adapt. It's Thursday, July 30th.
Chico, welcome to The Daily. Thank you so much for having me. Of course. This is your first time on the show. It is. Well, I am glad to have you here. You're the global climate correspondent at The New York Times, and you're based in Europe. So help us make sense of these fires that are sweeping across France and Spain. What's your understanding of how both these countries get fires this big and destructive at the same time?
Well, you're right. These fires are simultaneously unfolding as the largest ever in France and the largest in Spain.
What is driving this summer’s record wildfires across France and Spain?
They're both unfolding on the outskirts of major cities, Madrid and Bordeaux, and there have been large-scale evacuations. And in order to really understand how you get two fires that are both historic, you kind of have to go back all the way to May when it wasn't even summer yet.
Europe is bracing for its first major heat event of 2026.
That was the first time that Western Europe was hit by a heat wave. And it is punishingly hot. People are scurrying for shade.
I'm taking a shower right before bed. I'm sleeping with wet towels over me just to try to survive, honestly, and just try to sleep.
And then came the big one, just a month later, in late June. The Eiffel Tower closed early due to safety concerns. Temperatures in parts of France hitting 111 degrees. And if you just look at France for a second, in the span of three days, they set the hottest day in national history, back to back to back.
These are unprecedented times, said the French president.
And if that had just been a three-day thing, that alone would have been remarkable. But the unusually hot temperatures stayed. And then they let up for a few days, and then they came roaring back through July.
This morning, the death toll keeps climbing due to the brutal heat wave gripping Western Europe. It was very lethal. A public institute in Spain says there were more than 1,000 excess heat-related deaths this June.
Some estimates say 10,000 extra deaths because of heat. Some have said 20,000. But what you can say for sure is that this was a highly deadly event across Western Europe.
Wow. Okay, so you're saying tens of thousands of people are dying in these heat waves. In the U.S., we often see a couple thousand people die annually, and that's awful. But what you're describing is striking here. Why is this toll so big?
There's a couple reasons for that. One is Europe has buildings that are older and that were not built for this climate. They're built for colder temperatures, and they were built to retain heat.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–2:33
2
What is driving this summer’s record wildfires across France and Spain?
2:33–11:44
3
How did the early heat waves in May and June set the stage for catastrophic fires?
11:44–18:03
4
Why have heat waves in Europe caused so many more deaths than typical U.S. heat events?
18:03–21:26
5
How does Europe’s building design and low air-conditioning use amplify heat risks?
21:26–31:19