Several towns and cities in France have recorded their highest-ever temperatures as nearly 2,000 firefighters continued to battle huge blazes in the southwest and a searing heatwave gripping much of western Europe moved north and east.

Nantes, near the Atlantic coast, recorded 42C on Monday, beating a previous high of 40.3C set in 1949, while Brest, in Brittany, hit 39.9C, more than four degrees higher than its 2002 record of 35.1C.

Night-time temperature records were also set, including at La Hague in Normandy where 32.8C was recorded at 3 am on Tuesday.

Officials said France’s entire west coast, from Landes in the south to Finistère in the north, was affected.

Records were expected to be smashed again on Tuesday, meteorologists said, as the mass of hot air, the second to engulf large parts of the continent in recent weeks, moved north and east into eastern France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany.

The Dutch KNMI weather service said temperatures could top 38C on Tuesday, issuing a code orange extreme weather warning of risk to life in the centre and south of the country, while officials in Belgium warned of 40C-plus temperatures.

The UK record was broken at Heathrow airport west of London, where temperatures reached 40.2C at lunchtime on Tuesday.

As the European Commission announced that drought warnings were in place in 46% of the bloc’s territory, with 11% at alert level, wildfires in France, Spain and Portugal continued to ravage bone-dry forest and heathland.

No deaths have so far been reported in France, but in Spain, a fire burning in the north-western province of Zamora claimed the life of a 69-year-old shepherd after a firefighter died in the same area on Sunday.

Later on Monday, an office worker in his 50s was reported to have died from heatstroke in Madrid.

The country’s Carlos III Health Institute has reported more than 510 heat-related deaths.

Near the northern town of Tábara, a wildfire raced across a field, engulfing an excavator and forcing the driver who had been trying to dig a firebreak to run for his life as flames burned the clothes off his back. He was airlifted to the hospital.

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