AFP UK

Firefighters battling France’s worst wildfire of the summer fear changing winds over the weekend could make it harder to battle the blaze that has already burned for four days and killed two people.

“We’re expecting risky days” ahead, Florent Dossetti of the Var department fire brigade told AFP.

But he added that there had been fewer flareups Thursday than the day before, with firefighting planes and helicopters dumping water on new blazes to aid colleagues on the ground.

Around 1,200 firefighters and 250 fire engines worked through the night to tamp down the flames along an 80-kilometre front, the Var prefecture said.

It added that the situation “remains very unstable” in parts of the affected area, with 7,100 hectares of forest already burned.

Flames have ripped through the arid Plaine des Maures nature reserve towards the glitzy Riviera resort of Saint-Tropez. 

Firefighters on Thursday appealed for information about how the fire began, with current theories suggesting it started at a motorway rest stop on Monday.

Around 10,000 residents and holidaymakers have been evacuated in the area, with only a fraction able to return to campsites late Wednesday while others remained in emergency accommodation.

The prefecture urged evacuees to “above all avoid returning to your home or the place you were holidaying”.

Beyond the human impact, local producers of rose wine fear an economic blow from destroyed vines, while an operation to save protected local tortoises has been under way in the Maures nature reserve.

The fire is the latest in the Mediterranean region that has also seen major blazes claim lives in Greece, Turkey, Italy and Algeria in recent weeks, with numerous officials blaming climate change.

The region has long faced seasonal wildfires linked to the dry and hot summer weather, but climate scientists warn they will become increasingly common because of man-made global warming.

Hurricane Grace grounded flights and forced tourists to spend the night in shelters on part of Mexico’s Caribbean coastline before weakening to a tropical storm on Thursday as it moved inland.

Grace made landfall before dawn as a Category One hurricane — the lowest on the five-level Saffir-Simpson scale —  on the Yucatan Peninsula near the town of Tulum, famed for its Mayan temples.

It lost strength as it churned across the peninsula and was clocking maximum sustained winds of 100 kilometers (65 miles) per hour at 1500 GMT, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami said.

On Wednesday, as the hurricane approached Mexico, more than 100 flights to or from the major resort of Cancun were cancelled, and tourists in Tulum were told to leave their hotel rooms.

In total, more than 300 people were evacuated and the storm passed the Riviera Maya coastline without any loss of life, said Carlos Joaquin, governor of the southeastern state of Quintana Roo.

Cancun airport was reopened on Thursday but ports remained closed, Joaquin said on Twitter.

– Blackouts, minor damage –

Electricity was cut off, affecting almost 150,000 people, but as soon as the storm passes, repairs will be carried out to restore supply, Joaquin said.

Cancun’s hotel zone was largely deserted at dawn as intense wind and rain caused some damage to structures on the beach, which was pounded by strong waves.

In the neighboring state of Yucatan, the storm toppled trees in the city of Valladolid and damaged some of the less sturdy houses, according to images released by local authorities.

After it crosses the Yucatan, the storm is expected to move over the southwest Gulf of Mexico before hitting the eastern state of Veracruz, where a hurricane warning was in effect.

“Re-intensification is likely after the center reaches the Gulf of Mexico,” the NHC said.

“Grace is forecast to be a hurricane when it makes its second landfall on the mainland coast of Mexico late Friday or early Saturday. Rapid weakening is expected after Grace moves inland over central Mexico,” it predicted.

– ‘Destructive waves’ –

Gusty winds and heavy rains would continue to buffet the Yucatan Peninsula on Thursday, forecasters said.

“Heavy rainfall from Grace will likely result in areas of flash and urban flooding, and will also be capable of producing mudslides,” it said.

The storm surge will be accompanied by “large and destructive waves” near the coast, the NHC warned.

On Wednesday, businesses on the Riviera Maya had boarded up windows, while fishermen and tour operators hauled their boats onto land in preparation for the storm’s arrival.

Authorities in Quintana Roo had declared a red alert and opened 85 shelters for people who needed refuge from the storm.

Hurricane Grace unleashed strong winds and heavy rain on Mexico’s Caribbean coastline Thursday, grounding flights and forcing some tourists to spend the night in storm shelters.

The Category One hurricane — the lowest on the five-level Saffir-Simpson scale —  made landfall before dawn on the Yucatan Peninsula near the town of Tulum.

It was clocking maximum sustained winds of 80 miles (130 kilometers) per hour but weakened slightly as it moved inland, the US National Hurricane Center in Miami said, warning of a “dangerous storm surge” in the area.

On Wednesday, as the hurricane approached Mexico more than 100 flights to or from the major resort of Cancun were cancelled and tourists in Tulum were told to leave their hotel rooms.

“Hotels in Tulum have been evacuated and the tourists taken to various hotel shelters,” said Carlos Joaquin, governor of the southeastern state of Quintana Roo.

Another 125 people were evacuated in small communities in the sparsely populated area that bore the brunt of the storm.

Sea crossings to nearby islands were suspended and ports were closed, Joaquin said on Twitter.

– Blackouts, minor damage –

Electricity was cut off as a precaution, affecting almost 150,000 people, but as soon as the storm passes repairs will be carried out to restore supply, Joaquin added.

Cancun’s hotel zone was largely deserted at dawn as intense wind and rain caused some damage to structures on the beach, which was pounded by strong waves.

After it crosses the Yucatan, the storm is expected to move over the southwest Gulf of Mexico before lashing the eastern states of Veracruz and Tamaulipas late Friday or early Saturday.

“Grace is expected to continue to weaken as it crosses Yucatan, but re-intensification is expected when the center reaches the Gulf of Mexico,” the NHC said.

Strong winds and heavy rains would continue to buffet the Yucatan Peninsula on Thursday, forecasters said.

“Heavy rainfall from Grace will likely result in areas of flash and urban flooding, and will also be capable of producing mudslides,” it said.

The storm surge will be accompanied by “large and destructive waves” near the coast, the NHC warned.

On Wednesday businesses on the Riviera Maya had boarded up windows, while fishermen and tour operators hauled their boats onto land in preparation for the storm’s arrival.

At supermarkets in Cancun, some residents had stocked up on food, although the authorities called on people to avoid panic buying.

“We don’t know what it will be like,” said 41-year-old housewife Hortencia Rodriguez.

“With Wilma we didn’t prepare and we were hit hard,” she said, referring to a Category 5 hurricane that pummeled Cancun in 2005.

Authorities in Quintana Roo declared a red alert and opened 85 shelters for people who needed refuge from the storm.

Three people were killed and four others are missing after floodwaters swept down a mountain in northern Malaysia and surged through villages, authorities said Thursday. 

Water packed with mud, rocks and logs hit settlements close to Mount Jerai on Wednesday, leaving streets and houses swamped and washing away cars. 

Properties in the two affected districts suffered severe damage while some people were left trapped inside their houses, emergency workers said.

“I grew up in this village and this is the first time I’ve seen such an incident,” one local resident, Salwa Mohamad Isa, told state news agency Bernama. 

“Bridges and roads collapsed, cars washed away and people dying.”

Forty people have been evacuated from their homes to community centres, and the search and rescue operation is continuing.

Local NGOs said clearing of forests and mining in the environmentally sensitive area could have played a role. 

“All these destructive activities in this fragile ecosystem have to be stopped urgently,” they said in a statement. 

But a senior official has denied that logging caused the floods, instead blaming the intensity of the downpours. 

Flash floods are common in tropical Malaysia. 

But scientists say climate change increases the risk and intensity of flooding from extreme rainfall, because a warmer atmosphere holds more water.

Hurricane Grace made landfall along Mexico’s eastern Yucatan peninsula Thursday, clocking winds of 80 miles (130 kilometers) per hour as the National Hurricane Center warned of a “dangerous storm surge” in the area.

The center said in its last update that the Category One hurricane — the lowest on the five-level Saffir-Simpson scale —  was 10 miles from the town of Tulum on Mexico’s Caribbean coastline. 

On Wednesday, as the Hurricane approached Mexico ground flights and forced tourists in some hotels along the Riviera Maya to hunker down overnight in storm shelters.

At least 124 flights to or from Cancun were canceled, the city’s mayor, Mara Lezama, said on Twitter.

“Hotels in Tulum have been evacuated and the tourists taken to various hotel shelters,” said Carlos Joaquin, governor of the southeastern state of Quintana Roo.

Another 125 people from neighboring municipalities were also evacuated, while sea crossings to nearby islands were suspended and ports were closed, he said on Twitter.

After it has crossed the Yucatan, the storm was expected to move over the southwest Gulf of Mexico before lashing the eastern states of Veracruz and Tamaulipas.

Grace was “expected to bring strong winds and a dangerous storm surge” to parts of the Yucatan, according to the NHC.

“Heavy rainfall from Grace will likely result in areas of flash and urban flooding, and will also be capable of producing mudslides,” it said.

The storm surge will be accompanied by “large and destructive waves” near the coast, the NHC warned.

Businesses on the Riviera Maya boarded up windows, while fishermen and tour operators hauled their boats onto land and tourists soaked up the final hours in the sun.

At supermarkets in Cancun, some residents stocked up on food in preparation for the storm’s arrival, although the authorities called on people to avoid panic buying.

“We don’t know what it will be like,” said 41-year-old housewife Hortencia Rodriguez.

“With Wilma we didn’t prepare and we were hit hard,” she said, referring to a Category 5 hurricane that pummeled Cancun in 2005.

Authorities in Quintana Roo set up 85 shelters for people who needed refuge from the storm.

Ma Mingliang rarely encountered wild elephants while growing up in southwestern China, after centuries of hunting and deforestation nearly eradicated them. Today, the 42-year-old village chief barricades his community to keep them out.

A wandering herd of Asian elephants has captivated China for more than a year with a remarkable trek northwards through farms and cities hundreds of kilometres from their normal range in Yunnan province.

But an elephant in the street is now a common sight for residents of the animals’ home territory on the Myanmar-Laos border, where a recovering elephant population is being squeezed into ever-shrinking habitat, leading to more conflict with humans.

The tension is immediately apparent in Ma’s village in Xishuangbanna, a subtropical prefecture the size of a small country where China’s elephant population congregates.

The neatly ordered homes of the little community, called Xiangyanqing, climb up a gently sloping hillside, dotted by signs promoting human-elephant “harmony” and encircled by a steel fence separating it from adjacent jungle.

The village of rubber-tappers is entered through a wide steel gate that clangs shut at night, when hunger activates the elephants.

– ‘There is conflict’ –

Still, they regularly find their way in, putting the village in lockdown until the potentially dangerous trespassers wander out, usually after raiding fruit and vegetable gardens.

“Things used to be harmonious before. But there is conflict now,” Ma said dryly.

Ironically, successful conservation is partly to blame.

Asian elephants, which range across South and Southeast Asia, were nearly exterminated within China, leaving only around 150 in Xishuangbanna by the 1980s.

Conservationists say a 1988 hunting ban and strict protection of a sprinkling of fragmented elephant reserves has turned things around.

With no natural enemies, the population has doubled to more than 300 and counting.

“Compared to when we were kids, there are more baby elephants in the herds now,” Ma said.

Weighing up to four tons, they consume as much as 200 kilogrammes (440 pounds) of food daily.

Increasingly, filling up means a raid on a local farm.

Elephants inflict an estimated 20 million yuan ($3 million) in annual economic losses.

The devoured crops and damaged homes in Xishuangbanna are the prefecture’s biggest source of insurance claims, said Zhang Li, an ecology professor at Beijing Normal University involved in elephant conservation policy.

And they killed at least 41 people between 2013 and 2019, Zhang said. Many more are injured each year.

Attacks, typically by protective mothers or volatile lone young males, can resemble grisly crime scenes.

State media reports on recent cases describe victims being trampled by the surprisingly fast-moving beasts and bludgeoned or throttled by their strong trunks, leaving bones shattered, skulls cracked, and bodies gruesomely dismembered.

– Habitat loss –

Communist Party media portrays the 14 wandering elephants -– now pointed homeward after an 18-month odyssey — as lovable symbols of China’s conservation success.

But Chinese scientists say growing habitat loss is part of the problem.

Authorities have been forced to address safety risks.

Xishuangbanna in 2019 installed a high-tech grid covering hundreds of square kilometres that uses stationary cameras to relay elephant sightings to a command centre, which sends out warnings to communities. 

The drill: get indoors, hide upstairs out of reach, and don’t approach the beasts or use firecrackers to drive them off, which may anger them.

Throughout Xishuangbanna, statues and other imagery celebrate its leading residents — while stressing giving them a wide berth.

Villagers are adapting.

For decades, Lu Zhengrong’s hilltop farming settlement grew rice, corn and other staples, but years of elephant raids prompted a shift.

“The wild elephants became too troublesome and numerous, so we’ve switched to growing what they don’t eat, like tea or rubber,” Lu said.

That, however, is accelerating habitat loss, said the ecologist Zhang. 

Surging demand for rubber and tea has caused plantations to steadily expand into lands traditionally roamed by elephants but which lack official state protection, squeezing them into protected but increasingly isolated pockets. 

Inevitably, they roam out.

– ‘We need balance’ –

Exactly why the 14 wanderers made their mammoth trek northward remains a mystery.

But Zhang said “loss and fragmentation of their habitat may be the root cause,” exacerbated by competition for wild food sources as elephant numbers increase.

Things may worsen as climate change is projected to further reduce habitat, he added.

China is devising a new national park system to bolster habitat protection for key species like pandas and tigers.

A Xishuangbanna elephant national park has been proposed by Chinese scientists, but it faces a key obstacle.

A viable park would require the expensive and politically tricky task of reclaiming farmland and relocating hundreds of thousands of residents to link up pockets of habitat.

Until then, residents must live with the elephants.

“I can’t say we like it,” said Lu.

“But we need balance between this animal and people. We have to protect them.”

Dropping winds and cooler temperatures raised hopes Thursday that France’s worst summer wildfire could be contained, as firefighters entered a fourth day of battling a blaze that has killed at least two people.

The fire started on Monday evening at a motorway stop in the south of France with flames ripping through the arid Plaine des Maures nature reserve towards the glitzy Riviera resort of Saint-Tropez. 

More than 1,000 firefighters have been in action, using helicopters and water-dropping Canadair aircraft, while 10,000 residents and holidaymakers have been evacuated in the area.

“The fire is still not contained, but we’re counting on the conditions today to be able to announce it when we are completely sure,” said fire chief Loic Lambert.

Asked if more victims were likely, he replied that most of the scorched areas had been checked by firefighters.

The fire is the latest in the Mediterranean region that has also seen major blazes claim lives in Greece, Turkey, Italy and Algeria in recent weeks, with numerous officials blaming climate change.

The region has long faced seasonal wildfires linked to its dry and hot weather in the summer, but climate scientists warn they will become increasingly common because of man-made global warming.

The death toll from a massive earthquake in Haiti soared past 2,000 on Wednesday as relief workers warned of challenges to aid efforts five days after thousands of people were left homeless.

The number of people killed in Saturday’s devastating quake has risen by almost 250 to 2,189, the country’s civil protection agency said.

“There are around 600,000 people who were directly affected and who need immediate humanitarian assistance,” said Jerry Chandler, speaking from the emergency operations center in the capital Port-au-Prince.

“We had to find ways of ensuring security, which remains a significant challenge.”

The quake also injured at least 12,268 people and damaged or destroyed tens of thousands of buildings in the Caribbean nation, which has still not recovered from the devastating earthquake of 2010.

On Tuesday, many Haitians left with no shelter by the 7.2-magnitude earthquake had to endure lashing winds and pouring rain as Tropical Storm Grace passed over the country.

Even before the powerful earthquake, Haiti, one of the world’s poorest countries, was wracked by a mounting Covid-19 crisis and political chaos that culminated last month with the assassination of president Jovenel Moise.

And while gang violence plagued the poverty-stricken neighbourhood of Martissant near the capital in the weeks since early June, that threat appears to have diminished for now with an informal truce in place, easing fears that gun violence could impact the flow of convoys out of Port-au-Prince.

– ‘In ruins’ –

But relief workers still face other challenges.

“Sometimes we’ve been confronted by frustrated and impatient people, who have caused problems and blocked our convoys,” Chandler said.

The government has declared a month-long state of emergency in the four provinces impacted by the latest quake.

In the hard-to-reach area of Maniche some 120 miles from the capital, residents are still waiting for aid.

“The institutions we used to have … are in ruins,” local resident Rose Hurguelle Point du Jour said, adding that the church, parish and clinic have all been totally destroyed. 

Another resident, Geordany Bellevue, fears for people living in remote and landlocked parts of Maniche.

“There were a lot of mudslides in the mountains that injured and killed a lot of people. Some are missing and we don’t have the means to go find them,” the 32-year-old said.

“It was already hard to get aid here in the center of Maniche, so when it comes, it never reaches the disaster victims in the remote areas.”

Haiti’s civil protection agency said Wednesday that at least 332 people are still missing. 

Meanwhile aid agency USAID, which has been leading US relief efforts, said in a statement on Wednesday that “many roads remain impassable in some areas.” 

The agency added that it and its partners have relied on air and sea routes to reach some victims, including supporting the World Food Programme’s barge service “to deliver relief supplies and personnel to southwestern Haiti.”

Hurricane Grace bore down on Mexico’s Caribbean coast on Wednesday, grounding flights and forcing tourists in some hotels along the Riviera Maya to hunker down overnight in storm shelters.

A hurricane warning was in effect for a string of beach resorts, including Cancun, on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami said.

At least 124 flights to or from Cancun were canceled, the city’s mayor, Mara Lezama, said on Twitter.

The Category One hurricane — the lowest on the five-level Saffir-Simpson scale — was packing maximum sustained winds of 80 miles (130 kilometers) per hour, according to the NHC.

It was located 125 miles east of the Mexican resort town of Tulum late Wednesday and expected to make landfall early Thursday, having already drenched earthquake-stricken Haiti, the NHC said.

“Hotels in Tulum have been evacuated and the tourists taken to various hotel shelters,” said Carlos Joaquin, governor of the southeastern state of Quintana Roo.

Another 125 people from neighboring municipalities were also evacuated, while sea crossings to nearby islands were suspended and ports were closed, he said on Twitter.

After it has crossed the Yucatan, the storm was expected to move over the southwest Gulf of Mexico before lashing the eastern states of Veracruz and Tamaulipas.

Grace was “expected to bring strong winds and a dangerous storm surge” to parts of the Yucatan, according to the NHC.

“Heavy rainfall from Grace will likely result in areas of flash and urban flooding, and will also be capable of producing mudslides,” it said.

The storm surge will be accompanied by “large and destructive waves” near the coast, the NHC warned.

Businesses on the Riviera Maya boarded up windows, while fishermen and tour operators hauled their boats onto land and tourists soaked up the final hours in the sun.

At supermarkets in Cancun, some residents stocked up on food in preparation for the storm’s arrival, although the authorities called on people to avoid panic buying.

“We don’t know what it will be like,” said 41-year-old housewife Hortencia Rodriguez.

“With Wilma we didn’t prepare and we were hit hard,” she said, referring to a Category 5 hurricane that pummeled Cancun in 2005.

Authorities in Quintana Roo set up 85 shelters for people who needed refuge from the storm.

Ma Mingliang rarely encountered wild elephants while growing up in southwestern China, after centuries of hunting and deforestation nearly eradicated them. Today, the 42-year-old village chief barricades his community to keep them out.

A wandering herd of Asian elephants has captivated China for more than a year with a remarkable trek northwards through farms and cities hundreds of kilometres from their normal range in Yunnan province.

But an elephant in the street is now a common sight for residents of the animals’ home territory on the Myanmar-Laos border, where a recovering elephant population is being squeezed into ever-shrinking habitat, leading to more conflict with humans.

The tension is immediately apparent in Ma’s village in Xishuangbanna, a subtropical prefecture the size of a small country where China’s elephant population congregates.

The neatly ordered homes of the little community, called Xiangyanqing, climb up a gently sloping hillside, dotted by signs promoting human-elephant “harmony” and encircled by a steel fence separating it from adjacent jungle.

The village of rubber-tappers is entered through a wide steel gate that clangs shut at night, when hunger activates the elephants.

– ‘There is conflict’ –

Still, they regularly find their way in, putting the village in lockdown until the potentially dangerous trespassers wander out, usually after raiding fruit and vegetable gardens.

“Things used to be harmonious before. But there is conflict now,” Ma said dryly.

Ironically, successful conservation is partly to blame.

Asian elephants, which range across South and Southeast Asia, were nearly exterminated within China, leaving only around 150 in Xishuangbanna by the 1980s.

Conservationists say a 1988 hunting ban and strict protection of a sprinkling of fragmented elephant reserves has turned things around.

With no natural enemies, the population has doubled to more than 300 and counting.

“Compared to when we were kids, there are more baby elephants in the herds now,” Ma said.

Weighing up to four tons, they consume as much as 200 kilogrammes (440 pounds) of food daily.

Increasingly, filling up means a raid on a local farm.

Elephants inflict an estimated 20 million yuan ($3 million) in annual economic losses.

The devoured crops and damaged homes in Xishuangbanna are the prefecture’s biggest source of insurance claims, said Zhang Li, an ecology professor at Beijing Normal University involved in elephant conservation policy.

And they killed at least 41 people between 2013 and 2019, Zhang said. Many more are injured each year.

Attacks, typically by protective mothers or volatile lone young males, can resemble grisly crime scenes.

State media reports on recent cases describe victims being trampled by the surprisingly fast-moving beasts and bludgeoned or throttled by their strong trunks, leaving bones shattered, skulls cracked, and bodies gruesomely dismembered.

– Habitat loss –

Communist Party media portrays the 14 wandering elephants -– now pointed homeward after an 18-month odyssey — as lovable symbols of China’s conservation success.

But Chinese scientists say growing habitat loss is part of the problem.

Authorities have been forced to address safety risks.

Xishuangbanna in 2019 installed a high-tech grid covering hundreds of square kilometres that uses stationary cameras to relay elephant sightings to a command centre, which sends out warnings to communities. 

The drill: get indoors, hide upstairs out of reach, and don’t approach the beasts or use firecrackers to drive them off, which may anger them.

Throughout Xishuangbanna, statues and other imagery celebrate its leading residents — while stressing giving them a wide berth.

Villagers are adapting.

For decades, Lu Zhengrong’s hilltop farming settlement grew rice, corn and other staples, but years of elephant raids prompted a shift.

“The wild elephants became too troublesome and numerous, so we’ve switched to growing what they don’t eat, like tea or rubber,” Lu said.

That, however, is accelerating habitat loss, said the ecologist Zhang. 

Surging demand for rubber and tea has caused plantations to steadily expand into lands traditionally roamed by elephants but which lack official state protection, squeezing them into protected but increasingly isolated pockets. 

Inevitably, they roam out.

– ‘We need balance’ –

Exactly why the 14 wanderers made their mammoth trek northward remains a mystery.

But Zhang said “loss and fragmentation of their habitat may be the root cause,” exacerbated by competition for wild food sources as elephant numbers increase.

Things may worsen as climate change is projected to further reduce habitat, he added.

China is devising a new national park system to bolster habitat protection for key species like pandas and tigers.

A Xishuangbanna elephant national park has been proposed by Chinese scientists, but it faces a key obstacle.

A viable park would require the expensive and politically tricky task of reclaiming farmland and relocating hundreds of thousands of residents to link up pockets of habitat.

Until then, residents must live with the elephants.

“I can’t say we like it,” said Lu.

“But we need balance between this animal and people. We have to protect them.”