Heat wave edges higher in southern Europe, fuels wildfires

ROME (AP) — Intense heat baking Italy pushed northward towards the popular tourist destination of Florence Friday while wildfires charred the country's south, and Spain appeared headed for an all-time record high temperature as a heat wave kept southern Europe in a fiery grip.

Italy saw temperatures in places upwards of 40 C (104 F), Rome remained broiling and health alerts were issued for Florence and Bologna for Friday and Saturday.

Giancarlo Penza, of the Rome-based Catholic charity Sant’Egidio Community, warned in an appeal on state TV that the most vulnerable in such weather are elderly people living alone and the homeless.

“(The latter) are the persons who are invisible, who live on the street,” Penza said. “Knock on the door of an older person” who lives alone, next door, or “stop someone on the street” without a home and ask if they need help, he urged Italians.

Many southern European countries have suffered days of intense heat, accompanied by deadly wildfires in Algeria, Turkey, Italy and Greece.

While the area is known for its sunny, hot summers, scientists voice little doubt that climate change from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas is driving extreme events such as heat waves, droughts and wildfires. Such hardships are likely to happen more frequently as Earth continues to warm, they say.

Italian Premier Mario Draghi sent his emergency chief to Calabria in the south, where blazes burning for days in the rugged Aspromonte forest have claimed four lives.

Draghi pledged government aid for those losing property or businesses and an “extraordinary plan of reforestation.”

Wildfires on the Italian island of Sardinia were reported largely contained, but a blaze early Friday near Tivoli in the countryside east of Rome forced the overnight evacuation of 25...