France was preparing to make use of an enormous specially adapted cargo aircraft to dump flame retardants Saturday on a wildfire that has forced the evacuation of tens of hundreds of individuals, including from some suburbs of the wine region city of Bordeaux.
Including some 70,000 people evacuated in central Spain, wildfires in southern Europe this week have displaced greater than 250,000 people.
French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said the hulking A400M aircraft will join 18 other water- and retardant-dropping planes and helicopters waging an expected “long and really difficult” battle against the blaze raging within the Gironde region of southwestern France.
With winds expected to shift in a west-to-east direction on Saturday afternoon, potentially driving the hearth closer to Bordeaux, fire crews and authorities were digging trenches, using retardants and taking other steps to dam it, Nunez said. He said the hearth was about 30 kilometers (20 miles) west of town and lost a few of its intensity overnight.
The federal government mobilized soldiers to hitch the battle and was rushing in 1.5 million face masks to guard against choking smoke.
Authorities ordered people between the hearth and Bordeaux to evacuate, including from parts of town’s western suburbs and other towns and villages.
Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu described the fires as unprecedented and said the Gironde blaze became so strong on Friday that it had begun generating its own winds.
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“Our priority is obvious: protecting human lives,” he posted on X, adding that evacuation orders “should be respected directly.”
He said firefighting teams were being reinforced Saturday with the addition of tons of of soldiers and that respiration masks to filter out smoke particles were being rushed to the Gironde region for those exposed to the clouds of doubtless noxious fumes.
Blazes caught authorities off guard
The virulence of the wildfires, fueled by high temperatures and the long-term effects of climate change, caught fire crews and authorities off guard in each countries. Firefighters in Spain said the blazes spread so fast and violently that they may not be tackled head on. In France, some people even fled by boat when flames swept through touristic towns on the Atlantic coast.
Dozens of French firefighters have been injured, authorities said, but no deaths were reported in either country despite the scenes of panic as townsfolk fled by automobile and police went door to door to inform people to go away as large plumes of smoke darkened the skies.
Successive heat waves that hit unusually early and hard this yr, baking Europe with record-shattering high temperatures, have turned forests and scrublands into tinderboxes.
Fires have burned 130,000 hectares of forest already this yr in Spain, up from an annual average of 100,000 hectares over the past decade, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said Saturday as he visited a command post west of Madrid.
He said more favorable weather Saturday offered “a window of opportunity” for fire crews to bring the blazes under control. Madrid’s regional government said the fires decreased in intensity as winds and temperatures dropped.
Other European nations were helping, with Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, Portugal, Croatia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia already providing or expected to deploy water-dumping planes and helicopters to the Spanish and French fire fronts.
Wildfire headed toward Bordeaux
Gironde region prefect Sophie Brocas said on Friday night that strong winds from the west were pushing the hearth closer to the Bordeaux metropolitan area and that it had grown to “an unprecedented magnitude.” Bordeaux’s western suburbs covered by evacuation orders included Le Haillan and parts of Eysines and Mérignac, where town’s airport is situated. The airport said it remained open but that its bus and tram services were suspended.
The Gironde blaze broke out Wednesday near the Cap Ferret peninsula on France’s Atlantic coast, 60 kilometers (37 miles) from Bordeaux. Bordeaux authorities took in hundreds of evacuees, offering them food and shelter in an exhibition center, and town’s mayor said it could possibly be equipped to welcome as many as 10,000 people if that became crucial.
Evacuation orders were sent with special alerts to mobile phones, instructing people to go away, Brocas said.
“We wish everyone to be quickly delivered to safety. We must act quickly together,” she said.
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