More than 250,000 people flee their homes in France and Spain as wildfires burn – National
France was preparing to use a large cargo plane used to evacuate people caught up in Saturday’s wildfires that have forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of people, including from parts of the wine region city of Bordeaux.
Including about 70,000 people evacuated in central Spain, wildfires in southern Europe this week left more than 250,000 people dead.
French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said the A400M aircraft would join 18 other water-dropping planes and decommissioned helicopters in what is expected to be a “long and very difficult” battle against the wildfires in the Gironde region of southwestern France.
With winds expected to shift from the west to the east Saturday afternoon, which could push the fire closer to Bordeaux, firefighters and authorities are digging trenches, using trenches and taking other measures to contain it, Nunez said. He said the fire was 30 kilometers (20 miles) west of the city and had lost power overnight.
The government mobilized the military to join the war and was rushing to install 1.5 million face masks to protect against the suffocating smoke.
Authorities have ordered people between the fire and Bordeaux to evacuate, including parts of the western city and other towns and villages.
Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu described the fire as unprecedented and said that the Gironde fire had become so powerful on Friday that it had started producing its own winds.
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“Our priority is clear: protecting people’s lives,” he wrote in X, adding that evacuation orders “must be respected without delay.”
He said the firefighting teams were strengthened on Saturday with the addition of hundreds of soldiers and that breathing masks to filter smoke particles were rushed to the Gironde region for those exposed to potentially dangerous clouds of smoke.
The flames alarmed the authorities
The severity of wildfires, fueled by higher temperatures and the long-term effects of climate change, has caught firefighters and authorities off guard in both countries. Firefighters in Spain said the flames spread so quickly and violently that they could not tackle them directly. In France, some people even fled by boat as flames swept through tourist towns on the Atlantic coast.
Dozens of French firefighters were injured, authorities said, but no deaths were reported in either country despite scenes of panic as townspeople fled by car and police went door-to-door telling people to leave as thick smoke darkened the sky.
A succession of heat waves struck unusually early and severe this year, baking Europe with record high temperatures, turning forests and scrubland into tiny boxes.
Fires have burned 130,000 hectares of forest already this year 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 the bad weather on Saturday provided an “opportunity” for firefighters to control the blaze. Madrid’s regional government said the fires had subsided significantly as winds and temperatures dropped.
Other European countries are helping, with Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, Portugal, Croatia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia already providing or expected to send water jets and helicopters to the firefighting areas of Spain and France.
The wildfire is headed for Bordeaux
The head of the Gironde region, Sophie Brocas, said on Friday night that strong winds from the west were pushing the fire closer to the city of Bordeaux and that it had grown to an “unprecedented size.” The area west of Bordeaux covered by the evacuation orders includes Le Haillan and parts of Eysines and Mérignac, where the city’s airport is located. The airport said it is still open but its buses and trams have been suspended.
The Gironde fire broke out on Wednesday near the Cap Ferret peninsula on France’s Atlantic coast, 60 kilometers (37 miles) from Bordeaux. Bordeaux authorities took in thousands of evacuees, providing them with food and shelter at the exhibition center, and the city’s mayor said it could be equipped to accommodate up to 10,000 people if needed.
Evacuation orders were sent with special notifications on cell phones, telling people to leave, Brocas said.
“We want everyone to be brought to a safe place as soon as possible. We must act quickly together,” he said.
© 2026 The Canadian Press
