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Air Quality & Wildfire News — August 14, 2026

Canairy · 5 min read · 2026-08-14

Aerial night view of wildfires burning near a city, flames lighting up the dark sky.
Photo: Emre Beyhan / Pexels

Most of today's biggest fire news is coming out of Europe, where a long hot, dry stretch has fires running in several countries at once. In the U.S., the story is quieter but familiar: an Oregon family that finally had to go, a California coast fire holding steady under fog, and a Texas forecast built for ignition.

A wildfire hit a Croatian tourist town overnight

Driven by strong winds, a fire descended on Omis, on Croatia's Dalmatian coast, burning through settlements and trees over about 2,470 acres and forcing roughly 1,000 people to evacuate. Thirty-six people were treated by ambulance services in nearby Split; 14 were hospitalized and seven had life-threatening injuries, health officials said, as the New York Post reports.

Some 286 firefighters, 90 vehicles and four aircraft worked the fire through the night, and a stretch of the main coastal highway was closed. By Friday morning the chief fire commander said there were no open flames left, and part of the force had moved south to another fire on the Peljesac peninsula.

France and England fought fires on a record-hot day

France is having its driest year on record, and a new fire raced through woodlands overnight in the Landes region on the southwest coast, forcing more than 500 people out of the town of Luglon, the Associated Press reports. Fires have also turned up in cooler parts of the country, including the north and Brittany.

In central England, the West Midlands fire service called Thursday's outbreak one of the most significant it has ever handled. Several houses burned to the ground, and a child and three firefighters were taken to hospital after a wildfire in Stourbridge. It happened on the U.K.'s hottest day of the year so far, with 38.1 degrees Celsius (100.6 F) recorded in west London.

Spain moved 11th-century royal remains ahead of the flames

A fire that had been burning since Monday in Spain's Aragón region turned toward the San Juan de la Peña monastery, and authorities launched a rescue operation. A military emergency team got in and out once with ceremonial clothing before the flames pushed them back, then returned with police and heritage officials to remove the remains of the first three kings of Aragón and some historical paintings, NBC News reports.

The fire has burned more than 3.5 square miles and forced 16 towns to evacuate. As of Friday morning the monastery itself was unharmed. Elsewhere in Spain, a fire in Huelva province prompted the evacuation of about 700 people.

An Oregon family's escape from the Grasshopper fire

Kim Strange, her daughter Erika and Erika's husband Aaron Hoover had been preparing to evacuate their 26-acre property in Wasco County for 10 days, watching air tankers work the Grasshopper fire in the distance. When the fire got within half a mile and their area went to Level 3 — Go Now — they left in four vehicles down unpaved logging roads in the dark, The Oregonian/OregonLive reports.

"To sit there, and you're looking all around you, and all you see is fire," Erika said. The family told the paper they knew what they signed up for living in the rural county's mountainous far reaches, and have no regrets.

Fog is helping the California coast fire, for now

The fire that closed a stretch of state Highway 1 over the weekend has not injured anyone, but 503 structures remain threatened, SFGATE reported Friday morning. Cal Fire said a heavy marine layer moderated the fire's spread Thursday evening, and crews kept building containment lines behind houses on the east side of the highway.

That same fog is also a constraint: Cal Fire said steep drainages make the work very difficult, especially without aircraft, which have been severely limited by the conditions.

North Texas: heat, low humidity, burn bans

North Texas is under a Heat Advisory with highs between 99 and 103 and heat index values above 105, and the weekend looks the same, FOX 4 reports. Breezy southerly winds and low humidity are creating elevated fire weather, especially west of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex where vegetation is dry.

Most North Texas counties are under a burn ban, and no rain is expected for at least seven days. Forecasters say to act as though a ban applies even where one hasn't been issued.

Sources

Canairy aggregates publicly reported air-quality and wildfire news and summarizes it in plain English, with links to the original sources. This is educational information, not medical or emergency advice. In a wildfire or air-quality emergency, follow guidance from local authorities.