France orders 4,000 more evacuated as fires displace a third of a million across southwest Europe
Nearly 4,000 more people were ordered out as firefighters warned rising heat could undo gains against the Gironde blaze.
- On Tuesday, French authorities ordered nearly 4,000 more people to evacuate from tourist sites on the Atlantic coast west of Bordeaux as returning heat threatened firefighters' fragile hold on a vast wildfire.
- Local officials warned that the continent is "at war" against rapidly spreading fires, as extreme heat and widespread dryness across Western Europe intensify blazes in France and Spain.
- In Spain, a fire in hilly terrain near Avila has become the country's largest on record, scorching more than 500 square kilometers, while France reports 420 square kilometers burned in the stabilized Gironde blaze.
- Roughly 330,000 people have been driven from homes across France and Spain, and Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said work through the night left him "reasonably positive," though extreme heat threatens to return.
- Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has called for a national pact to fight wildfires as the country faces its deadliest fire season in decades, with experts identifying climate change as the primary driver.
54 Articles
54 Articles
France Evacuates Nearly 4,000 People Near Bordeaux as Heat Wave Tests Grip on Megafire
French authorities on Tuesday ordered nearly 4,000 vacationers out of campsites and holiday parks around the Atlantic resort of Lacanau, west of Bordeaux, as returning heat threatened firefighters’ tenuous grip on the megafire that has ravaged the Gironde department for a week. The blaze, which has burned some 104,000 acres (42,000 hectares) of pine forest and scrubland since July 22, remains “stabilized but not contained,” Gironde prefect Sophi…
Wildfire in southwest France highlights Seveso sites' vulnerability to forest fires
Protective measures had to be deployed around industrial facilities that use or store flammable or explosive materials. Of the 35 such sites listed in the Gironde department, Le Monde identified at least seven that were located close to the fire or in towns that were evacuated.
Unprecedented numbers in terms of devastation and mobilization, in Paris and Madrid there is greater optimism but one looks with concern at the weather situation. The monstrous fires that devour the forests temporarily extinguish the political conflict in Spain, not in France. Imposing the mobilization of the EU, but it has to deal with its fragility: "These fires do not fall within the ability to manage the emergency"
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