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France and Spain are preparing for even higher temperatures, after wildfires driven by an intense heatwave forced the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people over the past week.
Fires in south-west France and central Spain remained largely stable overnight into Monday as firefighters’ efforts to stop the blazes from advancing towards Bordeaux and Madrid were helped by light rainfall.
“This window of weather was favourable . . . but the fire is far from being under control,” said Colonel Jérôme Boulanger, spokesperson for France’s Civil Security agency. “Weather conditions over the next few days will be key,” he added, referring to forecasts for a heatwave that could push up temperatures to above 40C.
Some 220,000 people from France’s Gironde region have been ordered to safer ground since the fires started on Wednesday, but evacuations were paused overnight. Thousands are being housed in emergency shelters.
President Emmanuel Macron was set to hold a crisis meeting in Paris on Monday to co-ordinate the government response to what was shaping up to be a major crisis.
The wildfires broke out last Wednesday near Saumos, a town in the Gironde region where the wine city of Bordeaux is located. They have since burned through 42,000 hectares of forest, an area four times the size of Paris.
Authorities have called the fire “unprecedented” for France given its intensity and scope. They pointed to several hours overnight into Sunday when it took on characteristics similar to megafires in the US or Canada that generate their own lightning and winds. Such phenomena remain rare in Europe, so firefighters are not as familiar with combating them.
Since Saturday, firefighters have sought to stop the blazes from advancing from near the Atlantic coast, where they initially broke out, to Bordeaux, France’s ninth-largest city with about 260,000 residents. But changing winds and difficult conditions have complicated efforts.
The area is heavily wooded with pine forests and the Atlantic coast is crowded with tourists because of the summer holidays.
French finance minister Roland Lescure said 13,000 businesses were in the evacuated areas of Gironde so would not be able to operate normally.
Lescure promised “a broad mobilisation” of resources to help local companies and workers after an emergency meeting on Monday. The fires were “an economic thunderbolt that is hitting a region that did not need it”, he said.
The Gironde region is an economic hub for the defence and aerospace industries, as well as being home to military bases that are central to France’s nuclear weapons programme. Fighter jet maker Dassault Aviation has a factory in Mérignac on the outskirts of Bordeaux, while satellite maker ArianeGroup has two production sites that are in districts that have already been evacuated.
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The Spanish authorities said firefighters continued to work to “stabilise” the fires west of Madrid overnight. But Fernando Grande-Marlaska, Spain’s interior minister, warned that “today and tomorrow are absolutely crucial days”.
From Wednesday, “the weather forecasts are really negative from the standpoint of being able to take action against the fire”, Grande-Marlaska said, referring to expectations of higher temperatures, stronger winds and less humidity.
In France, authorities have dispatched almost 4,000 firefighters to Gironde backed up by military personnel and equipment, while the EU has also sent aircraft and resources via the bloc’s emergency-assistance mechanism.
Following requests for support from the French and Spanish governments last week, the EU has co-ordinated the dispatch of six planes to Spain and five planes as well as two helicopters to France from other European countries.
Portugal has also sent 134 personnel and 41 vehicles to support the Spanish response under the EU mechanism. The EU is using Copernicus satellites to map the development of the wildfires, which can provide close to real-time fire detection.
Asked why more of the EU’s reserve of 22 planes and five helicopters had not been dispatched, an EU official said: “It’s not always a matter of putting 10 additional planes. They need to be adapted for [local] scenarios. It’s not always a solution to send all the available assets.”
Spain and France have been the centre of this year’s European wildfire season. Despite a wetter than usual start to the year in western Europe, the fire conditions have been worsened by three successive heatwaves that dried out vegetation, making it easier for blazes to start and spread. Scientists say these conditions have been made more extreme by climate change.
The EU was monitoring the potential for fires in Portugal, Greece, Germany and other countries, officials said, as they expect the wildfire season to stretch to as late as November this year.
Officials said that wildfires could surpass the just over 1mn hectares burnt in the EU in 2025.
Additional reporting by Carmen Muela in Madrid
