From her terrace, Teresa Buglione can see the Arno River, which is 10 feet below normal, her withered olive grove, and a scorched patch of roadway where a motorist's cigarette butt ignited.

"The summer has been unbelievable. Just unbelievable," she says. "It's so painful, because it is like watching a part of my own life die away. All of my olives are dead."

In the land of Dante and in a region normally associated with Paradise, Tuscany - like most of Europe this summer - has instead been the Inferno, with highs ranging from 99 to 104 Fahrenheit most days since early June.

In Turin Monday, the Italian Meteorological Society reported the country's hottest reading since records began 250 years ago - 107 degrees.

Even much farther north, the mercury in London hit 100 this week for the first time in recorded weather history.

The sweltering temperatures, drought, and resulting fires continue to cause widespread misery and economic loss - and have exposed shortfalls in European crisis management and fire prevention.

In France, an emergency- room doctor accused the government of dragging its feet in setting up a team to protect citizens from potentially fatal heat; in Portugal, raging forest fires have offered deadly proof that woodlands management is inadequate.

The heat crisis could ultimately prove a catalyst for strengthening Europe's increasing unity. This week, European Commission President Romano Prodi said he is considering creating a task force which observers say could outline a plan for fire prevention throughout the Continent, coordinate information about manpower and equipment in different countries, and toughen measures against arson.

Arson has been a prominent factor in fires in both Italy and Portugal. Italian authorities suspect that some of the fires were set as a way of shirking the costs of clearing land for farming or development. Italy has had 2,500 more arson fires so far this year than in all of 2002. Police have arrested or detained 168 people.

In Portugal, about 60 people have been arrested on arson charges, including an ex-firefighter detained over the weekend and suspected of causing thousands of acres of fire damage to farmland.

Europe loses on average of 120,000 acres of forest to fire annually, according to statistics from the European Commission's Joint Research Centre. This year, Portugal alone has lost almost 500,000 acres in more than 2,000 separate forest fires, according to its forestry service. The devastated area is more than 5 percent of Portugal's woodlands.

The fires have destroyed many of Portugal's cork trees, which provide the raw material for one of the country's important industries.

Lack of planning created a tinderbox situation in Portugal which has steadily worsened since 1980, says Miguel Vieira, head of the forestry association Florasul, which is helping to coordinate a new forest-fire prevention program. More than 90 percent of Portugal's forests are privately owned. With almost a million of these smallholdings, the fire risk is increased because of dispersed control.

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