France gave the go-ahead Thursday for 84,000 evacuees forced out by a monster wildfire to return to home, the strongest sign yet that firefighters are turning a corner in a grueling battle against the flames that have burned an area four times the size of Paris.
But blazes flared elsewhere across Europe and actor George Clooney said he’d evacuated his French home because of a nearby wildfire.
Europe is sweltering under an exceptionally hot and arid summer, creating tinderbox conditions for unprecedented fires that have flared from the Atlantic coast to the eastern Mediterranean and forced hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate homes and vacation spots.
Firefighters battled flames in the United Kingdom, Spain, Germany and Turkey on Thursday and were tamping down smoldering forests in southwest France where 224,000 people had been forced to flee. Romania shut down both reactors at its Cernavoda nuclear power plant due to low water levels in the Danube River used to cool them.
Hollywood star George Clooney wrote to his local mayor that his family evacuated the southeastern French town where they’ve settled and that “we have no idea whether our beautiful home makes it through this terrible moment.” Clooney’s publicist Guido Gotz shared the letter to Brignoles Mayor Didier Brémond with The Associated Press.
“Amal and I are committed to making sure that whatever happens to our village,” Clooney wrote, referring to his wife Amal, a human rights lawyer. “We are part of this community and we’ll be part of making it whole.”
The fire near Brignoles, in the Var region, flared Wednesday, forcing 700 people to evacuate, the mayor’s office said. It said they were allowed back Thursday once the fire was tamed.
In the Bordeaux region of southwest France, wildfire evacuees streamed back to nine localities that authorities now deem safe. Among them was 50-year-old Sanachit Pho Ne Keo and his wife, who were relieved to discover that apart from black ash on an outside terrace, their home in Martignas-sur-Jalle wasn’t damaged.
“Everything seems OK and it’s a good feeling!” he said.
“The fire was pretty close, the last smoking embers are still close,” he added. “But we could’ve expected worse.”
Regional health authorities recommended that returnees wear gloves and face masks as they clean up and wash children’s toys and pets’ feeding bowls and paws. France’s public health agency reported that call-out doctors and hospital emergency wards in Bordeaux had seen a spike in cases involving asthma sufferers last weekend when the raging wildfire was still spewing choking smoke clouds.
“We’re on the right track,” said Sophie Brocas, prefect of Bordeaux’s Gironde region who gave the go-ahead for nearly two-thirds of the 224,000 evacuees to go home. They include 60,000 people allowed back to three Bordeaux suburbs on Tuesday.
