Firefighters in south-west France were battling flare-ups on Wednesday, one week into their fight to contain massive forest fires that have threatened the city of Bordeaux, near the Atlantic coast.
The night was “calm,” the prefecture of the Gironde region said on X. “The fire remains stabilised this morning with several fire flare-ups handled quickly overnight.”
But hotter winds with gusts reaching 20kph and a rise in temperatures to 41°C have raised fears that the relief may be temporary. “Weather conditions are unfavourable,” the prefecture said. This week France is expected to enter its fourth heatwave of the summer.
The fires have already ravaged 42,000 hectares of land and triggered the biggest evacuations since the Second World War, with 220,000 people asked to leave the area. It remains unclear when residents will return. About 4,000 tourists were evacuated on Tuesday from the beach town of Lacanau.
Bordeaux, with a population of 268,000, remains on high alert, with a number of businesses closing and others shifting to distributing water and food to firefighters.
Industrial sites storing potentially explosive materials have received additional protection, Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu said last week. Le Monde newspaper has identified seven industrial sites less than 20km from the fires or in evacuated areas.
The Bordeaux region is ringed by pine forests planted in the 19th century for the timber industry. The forests burn fast, compounding the effects of climate change: drier winters and hotter summers.
Four firefighters have died in France in the past two weeks. A separate blaze in the south-eastern region of the Var was stabilised on Tuesday after destroying 4,800 hectares of land.
Stabilised fires still need to be extinguished – a process that can take weeks or months, particularly on sandy soils such as in the Gironde.
Spain and France have been at the epicentre of Europe’s wildfire season, which came early this year and accelerated in recent weeks as successive heatwaves baked vegetation, making it easier for flames to spread rapidly.
“We have entered an era of fires that cannot be extinguished,” said Víctor Resco de Dios, a professor of forestry engineering and global change at the University of Lleida. “These are fires that burn with the intensity of several atomic bombs and, as such, putting them out is extremely complex.”
Temperatures in parts of Spain will also climb to 40°C on Wednesday, further straining emergency services. But there were signs of progress in containing the fires around Madrid.
After the advance of fire fronts was contained overnight, evacuation and shelter-in-place orders were lifted in several municipalities across the Community of Madrid and the province of Avila on Tuesday afternoon. That allowed about 24,000 residents to return home and another 20,000 people to emerge from confinement.
Still, most of Spain is considered at very high wildfire risk, according to meteorological agency Aemet. Wildfires have so far burnt more than 170,000 hectares in Spain, six times more than in the same period last year.
The Spanish government, in a statement on X, said its priority is containing and stabilising the fires, while remaining vigilant for new outbreaks, “before the weather situation become more unfavourable”.
