Europe wildfire threat eases, but blaze expands in Slovenia

MADRID — Europe’s spate of fierce wildfires abated somewhat Thursday amid cooler temperatures, with French firefighters starting to get the upper hand over two major blazes, Spain taming a fire that killed two people and no new outbreaks reported in Portugal.

But a fire in Slovenia on the border with Italy kicked up strongly Thursday, forcing the evacuation of three villages.

Spanish firefighters were tackling nine blazes, with two said to be especially dangerous in the northwestern Galicia region. Some of the 11,000 people evacuated because of the fires in Spain began returning home, and a major highway in the northwestern Zamora province reopened.

In France, more than a week of round-the-clock battling against ferocious flames by more than 2,000 firefighters and up to 10 water-dropping planes was slowly winning out against two major wildfires in the tinder-dry pine forests in southwestern France.

The Gironde region’s fire service said both blazes, which had forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of people, were contained.

Officials in Slovenia said the raging blaze in the southwestern Kras region was the biggest since the country became an independent nation in 1991.

“The fire is nowhere near its end,” Srecko Sestan, head of Slovenia’s civil protection service, told the official STA news agency.

The fire has engulfed nearly 5,000 acres and set off unexploded ordnance left over from World War I. More than 1,000 firefighters have been fighting the blaze, aided by the Slovenian army and police, as well as helicopters from Austria, Slovakia and Croatia.