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DROUGHT TIGHTENS ITS DEADLY GRIP IN EUROPE
By David Evans
Reuters
July 18, 2005

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050718/sc_nm/food_drought_europe_dc_1

PARIS - Drought in Europe tightened its deadly grip on Monday as a forest
blaze that killed 11 firefighters raged in Spain, and with weekend
temperatures soaring in France, authorities scrambled to protect the
elderly.

Spain and Portugal are suffering their worst droughts since records began in
the 1940s, and in western France, water levels are at their lowest since the
major drought of 1976.

Parched conditions now stretch from north Africa to the French capital,
causing billions of euros worth of damage as crops shrivel, rivers dry up
and pastures turn to dust.

French President Jacques Chirac, in western France to discuss the drought
with local officials, appealed for vigilance in the face of a worsening
situation.

"I ask each person to make an effort to limit the excessive use of water,"
he said, appealing for a "culture of economizing water that is increasingly
necessary for us."

As temperatures threatened to rise above 30 degrees celsius in parts of
France at the weekend, Health Minister Xavier Bertrand released funds of 26
million euros ($31.39 million) under a plan to help protect elderly people
from the effects of the searing heat.

The national heatwave plan was set up after 2003, when summer temperatures
consistently around 40 degrees killed 15,000 mostly elderly people in
France, sparking a national outcry.

Police in Spain retrieved the bodies of 11 firefighters, who died after
changing winds left them trapped by one of the many forest blazes caused by
tinder box conditions.

Three volunteer firefighters also died on Sunday night battling a fire at a
farm in central France.

France said the number of departments where water curbs would now apply had
risen to 52 from 50. More than half the country now has at least some form
of water rationing.

Measures range from bans on car washing or filling domestic swimming pools
to curbs on farmers, the biggest water users during the summer months.
Authorities have said anyone found breaking the law would be fined 1,500
euros ($1,811).

CROPS HIT

The drought has crippled crops in Spain, Portugal and north Africa, leaving
farmers demanding emergency help and authorities preparing to step up
imports to feed people and livestock.

The European Commission said last week cereals production in the bloc was
likely to fall 10 percent, or 28 million tonnes, this year due to the dry
conditions in many countries.

"The Iberian peninsula faces the worst conditions of the last 30 years and
the situation appears critical," it said.

In Portugal, the national farmers' association has estimated losses in that
country alone at one billion euros.

Without rain soon, the situation for late-harvested maize may get even
worse, the Commission said.

"The impact of lower water reserves in some of the main productive basins of
the EU -- southwest France and northern Italy -- could cause drastic
reductions if there's not enough rainfall in the next weeks," it said.

In Algeria, some 2.5 million farmers are at risk and in Morroco crops have
slumped by 57 percent to 3.6 million tonnes.

The need for increased imports threatens to worsen Morocco's already ailing
trade balance, and the harvest fall has contributed to a downward revision
of its 2005 growth forecast.

And in the south of France, the dry hot weather has spawned a new threat,
more common to northern Africa -- swarms of locally-hatched locusts have
invaded the department of Aveyron.

Hundreds of farms are at risk and dozens of hectares of farmland have
already been attacked by the voracious insects. Local authorities have
advised farmers to get their crops in from the fields as soon as possible.

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Published by David Sunfellow
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