Wildfires In France Drive 250,000 People From Their Homes, Creep Toward Wine City Of Bordeaux
LEGE-CAP FERRET, France (AP) — A raging forest fire In southwestern France, 55,000 people were evacuated overnight on Sunday, bringing the number of people forced from their homes to 220,000 in one region alone as flames moved ever closer to the wine region city of Bordeaux. Neighboring Spain oversaw its own fire evacuations on the country’s east coast.
Authorities in France’s Gironde region, where Bordeaux is located, issued overnight evacuation orders for five more areas southwest of the historic city as variable, high winds and dry conditions complicate a major effort to limit the spread of a monster fire that has been raging out of control since midweek.
Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said “the situation remains quite negative” after a “challenging” night for firefighters.
“The fire again became extremely severe and unpredictable, creating its own winds and moving erratically towards the Bordeaux metropolitan area,” Nunez wrote in X.
“Towards the end of the night, the mood calmed down,” the minister added.
The fire destroyed an area four times the size of Paris
The burning area, a large part of which consists of pine forests and bushes, was scorched by the fire. consecutive heat waves Gironde province said it had grown relentlessly this year, reaching an estimated 42,000 hectares (162 square miles) by Sunday morning. This is seven times the area of the island of Manhattan and four times the size of Paris.
Firefighters are struggling to slow the flames’ advance towards Bordeaux both on the ground and in the air by dropping water and retardant substances from planes. Troops were called in to support fire crews’ grueling round-the-clock work, and other European countries sent water-dropping planes, helicopters and firefighters.
Nunez said the number of firefighters mobilized increased to 2,500, supported by 18 planes and helicopters. The minister said that the giant A400M military cargo plane converted for firefighting will also be reused. On Saturday, it flew low over arid, fire-threatened forest areas to release a long plume of ocher-coloured retardant.
Bordeaux Mayor Thomas Cazenave said the fire was “at the gates of the metropolitan area” and had advanced about 15 kilometers (9 miles) from the city at its closest point.
The governor of Gironde ordered the partial closure of a major highway entering and exiting the city.
A second fire burning further south in the Landes region also forced the evacuation of 36,000 people this week, bringing the total number of displaced people in the southwest to more than 250,000. Nunez said 550 firefighters were still on duty fighting the blaze Sunday.
Fire crews are also fighting a separate fire in the Var region in the Mediterranean south of France. Approximately 3000 people were evacuated from here.
Bloomberg via Getty Images
Tens of thousands of people were forcibly removed from their homes in Spain
In neighboring Spain, authorities directed a new round of evacuations due to forest fires in the Valencia region. In total, wildfires here and other west of Madrid this week have forced 116,000 people from their homes.
A forest fire that raged out of control for four hours in a bush valley in Manises, a suburb of Valencia, killed one person on Saturday, the local government said, the first death recorded in Spain’s recent fires.
Earlier this month, 13 people were killed The fire in southern Spain was the country’s deadliest in recent memory.
Leicester reported from Paris. Associated Press writer Teresa Medrano in Madrid contributed to this report.
