More than 250,000 people flee wildfires in France and Spain | Wildfires

Wildfires in Spain and France have forced more than 250,000 people to flee, officials in both countries said, as they scrambled to bring the blazes under control.

Nearly 70,000 people were evacuated from central Spain, while 197,000 people fled France, including tens of thousands from the wine region city of Bordeaux.

Spain declared a national emergency due to fires; This is the first time a forest fire has been declared in the country. France’s evacuations “probably” constitute the largest peacetime evacuation the country has ever seen, the interior minister said.

Hundreds of firefighters have worked to contain the fires, fueled by persistent heatwaves and the climate crisis, but have still been unable to stop their advance. High winds were fanning fires in Spain, and two of the three blazes merged on Friday.

The Airbus A400M Atlas, a massive military cargo plane, has been deployed to join 18 other aircraft in the “long and very difficult” battle against forest fires in the Gironde region of southwestern France, French interior minister Laurent Nuñez said.

French government calls on army for help, It deployed 1,500 soldiers and sent 1.5-meter face masks to help protect people from smoke inhalation. Fire crews are also digging trenches and using retardant as wind is predicted to push the fires closer to Bordeaux. The fires were reported to be about 20 miles west of the city.

The French government ordered people in the path of the fire to evacuate, including those living in Bordeaux’s western suburbs. There were scenes of panic as citizens fled their homes under smoke-darkened skies as police went door to door to tell people to leave.

Gironde regional governor Sophie Brocas said on Friday that strong winds had driven the fire towards the Bordeaux metropolitan area and that the fire had reached an “unprecedented size”.

The sudden fires caught residents and officials off guard, officials said. When the flames advanced towards the coastal towns in France, citizens had to escape by boats.

French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said the fire in the Gironde was so strong that it began generating its own winds.

In his article to X, he said, “The fires that hit our country have reached an unprecedented level. Our priority is clear: to protect human life.” He urged people to comply with evacuation orders “without delay.”

Spain’s health minister has instructed people in Madrid not to go out due to concerns about poor air quality from smoke.

Monica Garcia told X: “Avoid physical activity and staying outdoors. If there is smoke or ash when you go outside, use a mask.”

Brocas said, “We want everyone to get to a safe place as soon as possible. We must act quickly together.”

Long successive heat waves in Europe have dried out forests, turning them into tinder for wildfires. Fires have consumed 130,000 hectares (321,000 acres) of forest in Spain this year, about a third higher than the country’s annual average, Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez said on Saturday.

In France, fires destroyed more than 98,000 hectares (242,000 acres); France’s interior minister said it was a “historic record”.

Scientists say climate disruption is triggering more frequent and more extreme weather events, evaporating lands and waterways, fueling wildfires and causing thousands of excess deaths. Europe is warming at nearly twice the global average.

Sánchez said cool weather Saturday offered firefighters a “window of opportunity” to get the fires under control. “We are going to have some complicated hours ahead of us because even though the temperatures have dropped, we don’t know exactly how the wind will develop, how strong it will be,” Sánchez added.

Other European countries were helping both countries fight the fires, while Croatia, the Czech Republic, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and Slovakia were sending aid and water evacuation planes to Spain and France.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen promised more aid was on the way.

Von der Leyen said in a post on

On Saturday evening, Spain’s interior ministry said a man died in a fire in Manises, Valencia. Authorities said he was found in a car in a ravine.

The fire was a separate incident from major fires west of Madrid that have not caused any deaths so far.