BRUSSELS: The European Union’s response to wildfires needs more funding, greater focus on forest management and enhanced education about fire risk as the climate changes, the head of the bloc’s crisis response said, as France and Spain battle deadly blazes. Wildfires have forced unprecedented evacuations of tens of thousands of people across France and Spain, and torn through a region already battered by a blisteringly hot and dry summer. “Climate change is accelerating. So our response must evolve just as quickly,” Hadja Lahbib, the EU’s Crisis Management Commissioner, told Reuters.

Other European Union countries have been sending help to Spain and France in the form of aircraft, fire crews and vehicles.

Both countries have requested, and received, help from other European Union nations