About 1,000 tourists have been evacuated from a camping village in the southern Italian region of Puglia after a vast wildfire broke out in an area of forest close to the complex.
The fire started early on Wednesday morning around the bay of San Felice, a wooded-coastal area near the town of Vieste in Gargano, a peninsula in the northern part of Puglia.
The flames were being pushed by strong winds towards the Baia di Campi village, which has the capacity to host 1,200 guests and is located about a kilometre (0.6 miles) from where the fire started.
Firefighters deployed three Canadair water bombers and a helicopter to tackle the blaze. “The situation is critical,” Giuseppe Nobiletti, the mayor of Vieste, told the Italian press.
Tourists who did not have cars were evacuated from the village by boat. They are being accommodated in a gymnasium in Vieste.
In recent weeks there have been wildfires across Italy, especially in the south and on the islands of Sardinia and Sicily, amid intense heat. The fires have destroyed more than 10,000 hectares (24,700 acres) of land, almost 8,400 hectares during the last month alone, according to figures from Coldiretti, Italy’s main agricultural association.
Two firefighters died last week while trying to save a family from their home that was close to a blaze near Matera in Basilicata, southern Italy.
Prosecutors in Foggia, a city in Gargano, have opened an investigation into the cause of the fire. Nobiletti hinted that it could have been started deliberately.
The majority of forest fires in Italy in recent summers have been found to have been caused by humans, either through negligence or intent.
The wildfire in Gargano came a day before the 17th anniversary of a blaze that devastated an area between Vieste and Peschici, killing three people and injuring 300. On 25 July last year 250 hectares of forest were also destroyed by a fire in San Felice bay, with 2,000 tourists evacuated from campsites and hotels.
