Wildfires send nearly 260,000 fleeing in France and Spain

Unchecked wildfires raging in France’s southwest and near Spain’s capital Madrid have forced nearly 260,000 people to flee and prompted Paris to deploy its military.

France hustled 197,000 people from areas around Bordeaux – including vacation spots crowded this time of year – in what was “probably” the biggest peacetime evacuation the country has seen, its interior minister said.

In Spain, where 60,000 people were evacuated from villages west of Madrid, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said the priority was “to save lives” as he visited the fire zone. Officials in Madrid had earlier given a higher estimate of around 70,000 people evacuated.

In the Spanish town of Brunete, west of Madrid, mayor Mar Nicolas told AFP she was “very worried”.

“Every year there are fires, but this one has been tremendous,” she said. “It is a catastrophe.”

A separate wildfire near the eastern Spanish city of Valencia killed one person before firefighters brought it under control.

Overstretched firefighters in Spain and France battling around the clock for days have been unable to contain the infernos, though authorities in both countries suggested the intensity of some of the blazes had notched down.

Two French firefighters died earlier this week near Bordeaux.

French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said the blaze in the Gironde region where Bordeaux is located was less intense and no longer a “convective” type of fire that self-fuels through rising currents.

Officials in Madrid also said the fires had advanced little overnight and decreased in intensity.

But the battles were far from won.

The threat in Gironde “remains very serious,” said top regional official Sophie Brocas.

Spain’s Sanchez warned: “We are going to have some complex hours ahead.”

Jacqueline Villafranca, a 38-year-old who evacuated to Madrid on Friday, said that when smoke filled her village of Navalagamella “I thought everything was going to burn, the house and everything”.

“Here you can breathe normally – yesterday it was unbearable,” she said, sitting in a gymnasium-turned-shelter.

Tinderbox conditions

This aerial photograph shows smoke emanating from the wildfire north of the Arcachon basin (seen Top) covering the forest, with a view of a beach and the Atlantic Ocean (bottom) near Lege-Cap-Ferret, southwestern France. Photo / AFP

The fires in Spain and France advanced quickly because of tinderbox conditions worsened by successive heatwaves the two countries have experienced since May.

Scientists say global warming is increasing droughts and causing weather emergencies to become more extreme and more frequent. Europe is the fastest-warming continent because of climate change.

Both countries were receiving EU help in the form of firefighting aircraft from other European countries.

France has deployed 1500 soldiers to help firefighters near Bordeaux, and on Saturday an A400M military transport aircraft modified to release up to 20 tonnes of fire retardant joined the fleet of smaller planes already dousing flames.

The head of the Paris fire brigade told AFP that 100 firefighters from the French capital had been deployed to the southwest, adding to 45 firefighters and six vehicles already sent there.

Emergency shelters were set up in schools and gymnasiums in southwestern France for tourists and residents left wondering what they would return to.

Nuala Kelly, a 75-year-old Irish tourist, said she had never seen anything like this.

“Never, never, never, never, never, and I’ve travelled all over the world and been in all sorts of situations,” she told AFP at Bordeaux’s vast exhibition centre now housing thousands of people.

Olivier Stewart, a 38-year-old Frenchman who had to leave the village of Merignac with his wife and young children, said the children were “the most stressed”.

“They think the fire is going to burn down the house, but we’re coping,” he said.

Sunday’s final stage of the Tour de France road cycling race has been shortened after the interior ministry said it would need to redeploy officers mobilised for race security to the fires instead.

‘Record’ area burnt

The massive smoke clouds thrown up by the French and Spanish fires were starting to connect in the atmosphere, according to satellite images from Spain’s Aemet weather agency.

Fires currently raging across France have burned nearly 98,000ha – a “historic record”, Nunez said.

In the southwest alone, the flames have consumed more than 32,000ha – three times the surface area of Paris – and destroyed at least 100 buildings, authorities said.

French President Emmanuel Macron said the country “will rebuild”.

The blazes west of Madrid have burned up to 25,000ha, according to Spain’s interior ministry.

Two of the three major wildfires there have merged into one, and are threatening to join up to form a massive inferno just kilometres from the capital.

- AFP