Wildfires on the coast of southwestern France moved inland towards Bordeaux on Saturday, forcing the evacuation of thousands in the city’s suburbs, while blazes across the border in Spain caused their first death.
Hundreds of thousands of people have been evacuated in both countries because of those fires, the latest natural disasters linked to sustained dry spells and successive heatwaves that scientists say have been exacerbated by climate change.
“The fires that are hitting our country have reached a level that has never been seen before,” French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu wrote on X.
So far this July, high temperatures have averaged 32.2 degrees Celsius (90 degrees Fahrenheit) in the region of France hit by the fires, which is 7.3 degrees Celsius (13.1 degrees Fahrenheit) above the month’s average high between 1961 and 1990, according to data on Reuters Climate Monitor.
“We expect a fight that will be long and very difficult,” Interior Minister Laurent Nunez later told reporters.
France’s armed forces have been drafted in to help overwhelmed fire brigades. On Saturday afternoon an A400M military transport aircraft, the biggest in France’s fleet, joined the effort by dumping liquid over a flame-hit forest, Reuters TV footage filmed from a helicopter showed.
