Europe’s long, hot summer leads to thousands evacuated and fire operators dead

A record-breaking hot and dry summer tightened its grip on Europe on Monday, as water-dropping planes swooped over a major wildfire in Greece, firefighters in France sought to stabilize a blaze in Provence, and much of the United Kingdom recorded its driest July in nearly two centuries.

Wildfires west of Athens jumped containment lines a day after a midair collision between two helicopters killed two crew members. A Greek and a Danish national died and two others were hospitalized following the collision on Sunday.

All four were private operators chartered by the Greek firefighting service.

In France, firefighters in the region around Bordeaux guarded against potential flare-ups inside a still-burning scar four times the size of Paris.

A prolonged heat wave and lack of rainfall led to the driest July in England and Wales in nearly 200 years of recordkeeping, according to provisional statistics, the U.K.’s weather service said Monday.

All of Wales and more than half of England are officially in drought, the Met ...