Fire crews battled a mega-fire four times the size of Paris in southwest France while facing tinderbox temperatures forecast to climb above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) on Wednesday.
The heatwave and forecast winds could hamper progress against the blaze that has forced 220,000 people from their homes, authorities for the Gironde region around Bordeaux said.
In a Wednesday morning update on the huge firefighting effort, Gironde authorities said the situation overnight had been “calm” and that the blaze hadn’t spread — although it’s still not contained a week after it started.
The onset of heatwave temperatures and winds heightened the risk of flames flaring again.
On Tuesday, Gironde authorities ordered 4,000 more people evacuated from tourist sites along the Atlantic coast, widening what may be France’s largest peacetime evacuation.
“The situation remains complicated. That’s clear. We’re not out of the woods,” Gironde prefect Sophie Brocas said Tuesday evening. But she also gave the go-ahead for 60,000 evacuees to return to their homes in three Bordeaux suburbs that haven’t burned.
The opposing movements — thousands ordered out of coastal resorts while those returning were told to be on the alert — underscored how precarious the fire’s hold remained.
Across France and Spain, roughly 330,000 people have been driven from homes and vacation sites by huge wildfires. Spain braced for its fourth heat wave of the summer, with several blazes still burning out of control, including the largest in its recorded history.
Even so, Spanish authorities began lifting evacuation and stay-at-home orders for thousands of people after firefighters made progress.
At its most violent, the Gironde blaze created a gargantuan black thundercloud, electrified and lit from within. It generated lightning, violent winds and new fires beyond the original front. The phenomenon, known as a pyrocumulonimbus cloud, was the first recorded in France.
More than 1,160 square kilometres (448 square miles) have burned across France this year, according to the Interior Ministry.
Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent, heating at more than twice the global average, according to the European Union’s Copernicus climate service. Western Europe recorded its hottest June on record, with extreme heat and widespread dryness contributing to the spread and intensification of fires in France and Spain, Copernicus said.
