France, Spain Fight Wildfires; Over 250,000 People Evacuated

The latest bushfires in Southern Europe this week have displaced more than 250,000 people; 70,000 of these were evacuated in central Spain. According to the statement on the municipality’s Facebook page, one person died in Manises; this was the first death ever from the fires.

In France, the giant A400M carrier flew low, its long plume of ocher-coloured retardant drifting over drought-stricken forested areas in the southwest, as fire crews on the ground battled flames that authorities feared could spread to the wine region city of Bordeaux.

Race organizers and the Paris police department announced Sunday that the 21st and final stage for the three-week Tour, France’s most famous annual sporting event, has been shortened; This reflects the huge pressure put on emergency services by two major fires in the south-west.

Instead of starting in Thoiry in the west of the capital, Tour riders will race in Paris on Sunday on an 89-kilometer (55-mile) circuit, a third of the planned 133-kilometer (82.5-mile) route. Part of the race’s security team will instead “strengthen response efforts in areas affected by bushfires,” according to a statement announcing “exceptional measures necessitated by the situation.”

Wind direction change creates concern for Bordeaux French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said that as winds expected to change from west to east on Saturday afternoon brought the flames closer to Bordeaux, fire crews and authorities were digging ditches, using retarders and taking other steps against the fire, and predicted a “long and very difficult” battle.

He said the fire was about 30 kilometers (20 miles) west of the city and lost some of its intensity overnight. The governor of the Gironde region, which includes Bordeaux, said the blaze had become a “firestorm” on Friday after catching fire earlier this week and warned that although firefighters were making progress, it “remains dangerous”.

The government mobilized soldiers to join fire crews and sent 1.5 million face masks to protect against the choking smoke.

Authorities ordered the evacuation of people between the fire and Bordeaux, including the city’s western suburbs and other towns and villages.

Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu called the fires unprecedented and said Friday that the Gironde fire had become so strong that it had begun to generate winds of its own. Firefighters have been strengthened with the addition of hundreds of soldiers, and respirators that filter out potentially harmful smoke particles have been directed to those exposed, Lecornu said.

In Bordeaux, authorities received thousands of evacuees, providing them with food and shelter at an exhibition center that the city’s mayor said could be equipped to accommodate as many as 10,000 people if necessary. The city’s airport remained open but bus and tram services were suspended, he said.

Gironde Governor Sophie Brocas said evacuation orders were sent to mobile phones with special alerts, instructing people to leave the area. He said the fire destroyed about 140 houses in the area.

The magnitude of the fires caught the authorities off guard. The French military A400M transport aircraft, specially converted for firefighting, was a new and heavy vehicle in warfare. It joined at least 18 other water- and retardant-dropping planes and helicopters that Nunez said were stationed in the Gironde region and operating in rotation through smoke-filled skies.

The severity of the French and Spanish fires, fueled by high temperatures and the long-term effects of climate change, caught fire crews and authorities off guard.

Firefighters in Spain said the fires were spreading so quickly and violently that they could not be intervened directly. As flames engulfed tourist towns on the Atlantic coast in France, some people fled by boat.

“We’ve never seen anything like this,” said Javier Organista, a resident of El Tiemblo, west of Madrid, where the fire destroyed the famous chestnut garden. “When we saw the flames coming into our town, surrounding us and leaving us with almost no way out, all the neighbors came together to stop its advance.”

“It’s really sad,” he said.

Climate change increases fires Spain has deployed 2,600 firefighters, police and other emergency personnel to two fires west of Madrid, with the support of 19 water evacuation planes and helicopters.

France sent 1,400 firefighters to the Gironde fire and hundreds more to another forest fire further south in the Landes region. Dozens of firefighters were injured during scenes of panic as townspeople fled in cars and police went door to door telling people to leave, authorities said.

Back-to-back heatwaves that hit unusually early and hard this year, subjecting Europe to record-breaking high temperatures, have turned forests and bush into tinder boxes.

Fires have burned 130,000 hectares of forest in Spain this year, up from an annual average of 100,000 hectares over the past decade, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said Saturday while visiting a command center west of Madrid.

He said more positive weather on Saturday offered fire crews a “window of opportunity” to get the fires under control. The regional government of Madrid said the intensity of the fires had decreased as winds and temperatures dropped.

The death reported on Saturday occurred in Manises, part of the bushfire-affected area of ​​Valencia.

Other European countries were also assisting, with Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, Portugal, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Sweden, Slovakia, Germany and Switzerland already expected to provide or deploy water dump planes and helicopters to the Spanish and French fire fronts.