Firefighters in Sweden and Norway were Wednesday trying to contain wildfires which forced hundreds to leave their homes and sparked concern over a repeat of last year’s historic forest fires.
A total of 10 fires were of a “serious nature”, a Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB) spokesman told AFP
Eight helicopters were being used to fight the blazes in the south that were reported to be under control Wednesday afternoon.
“They have them under control”, MSB press secretary Marcus Arskog told Swedish news agency TT.
The most severe covered 300 hectares and broke out in the Hassleholm region in southern Sweden, forcing 49 people to evacuate.
Last year a historically hot summer set a total of 25,000 hectares of forest ablaze in Sweden, almost 10 times the yearly average, according to a government study.
MSB said the exact cause of the spring fires was not known but believed them to be the result of human activity, either from barbecues or forestry machines.
The sunny and warm spring weather had also made the fire risk unusually high for the season.
“The next few days look really bad,” Anneli Bergholm Soder, head of operations at MSB, told a press conference on Wednesday,…
