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Massive wildfires continued to rage across southwestern Europe on Sunday, forcing more than 330,000 people to flee their homes in France and Spain as firefighters struggled to contain blazes fuelled by extreme heat, strong winds and prolonged drought.
France remains the hardest-hit country, with authorities battling one of the country’s largest wildfire disasters since World War II. More than 220,000 people have been evacuated across southwestern France, including about 55,000 residents overnight from villages south of Bordeaux in the Gironde region, renowned for its vineyards.
The wildfire has advanced to within about 15 kilometres of Bordeaux’s metropolitan outskirts, although Mayor Thomas Cazenave sought to reassure residents that there was currently no plan to evacuate the city itself.
French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez warned that conditions remained “very unfavourable,” saying the blaze was moving unpredictably towards the Bordeaux metropolitan area.
More than 2,500 firefighters, assisted by a Swiss firefighting team, 1,500 military personnel and nearly 1,200 police officers and gendarmes, have been deployed to battle the flames and carry out rescue and evacuation operations. Authorities have also closed a 60-kilometre stretch of the A63 motorway linking France with Spain as the fire spread rapidly through dry vegetation.
Captain Nicolas Braz, one of the commanders overseeing the operation, described the wildfire as “erratic and unmanageable,” saying it had generated its own powerful winds and whirlwinds, making containment extremely difficult.
The scale of the emergency also affected major sporting events, with the final stage of the Tour de France in Paris shortened to allow security personnel to be redeployed to firefighting efforts.
President Emmanuel Macron pledged full government support, saying France would rebuild the affected communities and assist residents “for as long as is needed.”
Since the beginning of the year, nearly 98,000 hectares of land have been burned across France, including more than 42,000 hectares in the latest fires.
In neighbouring Spain, wildfires have forced the evacuation of more than 90,000 people, mainly in the regions around Madrid and Ávila. A new fire front also erupted near the Mediterranean city of Valencia overnight, further stretching emergency resources.
Valencia regional President Juanfran Pérez Llorca admitted the blaze had exceeded firefighting capacity, saying authorities were facing a fire “beyond our capacity to extinguish.”
Officials warned that soaring temperatures, low humidity and gusty winds on Sunday could worsen conditions and accelerate the spread of the flames.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, after visiting fire-hit areas west of Madrid, warned that “difficult hours lie ahead” despite signs of limited progress overnight. He also called for “a major public pact on the climate emergency,” stressing the need for long-term measures to address increasingly severe wildfire seasons.
The crisis has already claimed at least three lives, including two firefighters killed in France and one civilian who died in Spain’s Valencia region, while thousands more remain displaced as emergency crews continue battling one of Europe’s worst wildfire emergencies in recent years.
