France wildfire forces thousands to flee as tinder box conditions persist in warming Europe
By Stephane Mahe
LEGE-CAP FERRET, France, July 23 (Reuters) – A fast-moving wildfire has forced more than 10,000 people from homes and campsites on France’s Atlantic coast as extreme heat and deepening drought fueled fires across Europe and scientists warned that climate change was worsening water shortages on the continent.
Three consecutive heat waves across Europe this season have intensified drought, limited water supplies and caused vegetation to dry out; This has resulted in wildfires burning more land this year on the world’s fastest-warming continent than the annual average of the past two decades. It was also blamed for thousands of deaths.
More than 10,000 people were evacuated overnight in southwestern France as a fast-spreading wildfire ravaged at least 2,400 hectares of land west of the city of Bordeaux, authorities said Thursday.
The Governorship stated that five hundred firefighters are struggling to control the fire, adding that no one has been injured so far.
The fire is located near the tourist attraction Arcachon Bay, and most of the evacuees were visitors staying at campsites. “Overnight the fire spread faster than we expected,” said Philippe de Gonneville, mayor of Lège-Cap Ferret.
While authorities in neighboring Spain were trying to extinguish fires that had been raging for several days, a 59-year-old firefighter in Italy died after falling ill while fighting a large forest fire near San Cataldo in Sicily.
THE SKY TURNED RED. BLACK AND RED’.
Often likened to the luxurious Hamptons in the United States, the Cap Ferret peninsula is home to some of France’s expensive estates; Here wealthy Parisians and Bordelais come to sip white wine and feast on oysters.
Lège is the only village of the peninsula’s 11 villages currently under fire threat, but Gonneville said authorities evacuated 5,200 people overnight. He said access had been completely closed and contingency plans were in place to evacuate the entire peninsula by both road and sea if necessary.
The fire had now reached the border of Lège, causing the evacuation of many campsites and neighborhoods close to the forest.
“We moved here two and a half years ago because it’s such a beautiful place and we don’t know where to turn,” said Jeanine Clarke, 46, who was evacuated with her family and dog to a nearby evacuation center.
Camper Elizabeth Carron said she was eating dinner when she saw the flames. “The sky turned red. Black and red. Then slowly we started to smell it. There were ashes in the car, in the trailer, in my grandchildren’s little tent. Two hours later they told us to leave.”
Wildfires remained a major problem across Spain on Thursday, with authorities battling several significant blazes.
Spain’s rail infrastructure operator ADIF said train traffic between Mejorada del Campo and Alcalá de Henares near Madrid was suspended due to a forest fire near the tracks. The outage affected services on the high-speed rail line connecting Madrid and Barcelona, one of the country’s busiest transport corridors.
Firefighters, emergency personnel and military units continued to be deployed in central Spain as authorities monitored several active fires, including fires in Guadalajara, Toledo, Ciudad Real and Albacete. More than 100,000 hectares have burned across the country so far this year.
More than 10,000 deaths were recorded in Europe and Britain in the last two record-breaking heatwaves in late May and June; The only reliable reason for the unusually high deaths is heat-related, scientists said. Belgium said on Thursday that June 27, during last month’s heat wave, was the country’s second-deadliest day of the 21st century, with 650 deaths.
Europe is bearing the brunt of a rapidly warming climate, with temperatures rising more than twice as fast as the global average. Reuters Climate Monitor, an interactive tool that tracks weather, showed that the average highest temperature in Western Europe was forecast to be 26.5 degrees Celsius on Thursday; This is 2.9 C above the normal high of July 23 from 1961-1990.
DROUGHT DEVIATION WATER
This summer many European countries are suffering from drought. France fears its lowest maize crop in 50 years, Romania restricts farmers’ access to water for irrigation, while the Netherlands declares a water shortage. Hose bans were introduced in London and seven Greek islands declared emergencies to protect water.
In a report published Thursday, scientists said the findings show that climate change is changing the way droughts occur in Europe. Analysis by the World Weather Attribution group of climate scientists said extreme heat accelerates how much water evaporates from the soil.
But challenges also encourage people to think outside the box. Communities in Spain’s northwestern Galicia region have restarted domestic livestock farming to rebalance ecosystems and reduce wildfires in a region that is at the epicenter of the country’s worst year for fires in 2025. A special breed of cattle, the agile Cachena, locally known as the ‘goat-cow’, was deployed to find its way through the bush, which was now a powder keg for fires.
(Reporting by Stephane Mahé, Zhifan Liu, Dominique Vidalon, Gabriel Stargardter, Ingrid Melander, Ardee Napolitano and Charlotte van Campenhout, Kate Abnett in Brussels, Emma Pinedo, Victoria Waldersee and Miguel Vidal in Spain and Alvise Armellini in Italy; Writing by Michele Kambas; Editing by Toby Chopra)
