 Fires, stoked by hot winds, swept through southern Italy on Thursday, a day after a monitoring station in Sicily reported temperatures of 48.8 degrees Celsius. Some scientists believe this could be the highest in European history. The record temperature was reported on Wednesday, closer to the city of Syracuse, in the southeast of the island of Sicily, though this still needs to be verified by the World Meteorological Organization. If the data is validated, it could be the highest value ever recorded in Europe. It would beat the previous record of 48 degrees measured in Athens on July 10, 1977. Wildfires raged also in the southern part of Sardinia in the early hours of Thursday morning. The fire brigade was also trying to put out a blaze in a rural area near the town of Mandas, where a blaze spread on several fronts, burning a nearby forest. Two teams of firefighters were deployed to protect some residential structures on the outskirts of the town. And serious damage has also been reported in Calabria, the toe of Italy's boot, where some families left their homes and a man died on Wednesday.