France, Spain battle ‘monster’ wildfires
Bordeaux, FRANCE—Firefighters battled massive blazes tearing through forests across France and Spain on Monday, as authorities warned of a fresh heat wave set to engulf the scorched French wine-growing region around the major city of Bordeaux.
More than 325,000 people have fled their homes, mostly in the Gironde department, home to Bordeaux, as some of the worst forest fires in either country’s history rage across southwest France and central Spain near Madrid.
France’s fires has caused an unprecedented “pyrocumulonimbus,” a giant fire cloud that creates its own winds and packs lightning that causes more blazes, said the National Firefighters Federation of France (FNSPF).
“It’s a David-versus-Goliath scenario … at some point, we’ll find a weak spot and strike there,” said FNSPF spokesperson Eric Brocardi.
French President Emmanuel Macron was to hold a crisis Cabinet meeting to discuss the emergency on Monday morning.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez was set to visit fire-hit areas in Valencia, in the east of the country, on Monday where firefighters are battling a new blaze and where 15,000 people have been forced to flee their homes.
On Sunday, during a visit to the fire zone in Avila province west of Madrid, he warned: “Difficult hours lie ahead.”
Climate change
Spain’s Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said on Sunday evening the fires were advancing, but slowly.
Earlier on Sunday, Civil Protection Chief Virginia Barcones, describing the fire around Avila, said the country was battling a “monster.”
“We are dealing with a perimeter of 280 kilometers encompassing 77,000 hectares,” Barcones told state broadcaster TVE of the wildfire.
Scientists say climate change is making such extreme weather events more frequent and intense.
Coming at the height of the summer holiday season, the fires were fueled by woodland parched to tinder by successive heat waves and lack of rain since May.
‘Fire calling shots’
In France, the prefect of the southwestern Gironde region and where the country’s fires are concentrated, urged tourists to stay away and seek “other destinations.”
“The wind is changing so much, it’s really the fire calling the shots. We just have to go with it,” a firefighter said.
Around 220,000 people have been evacuated in the region, with 45 campsites forced to shut, ruining the holiday plans of around 40,000 people.
The Gironde local authority said early Monday it had banned holiday camps, including Scouts’ trips involving overnight stays and holiday camps for people with disabilities.
Garden hose in hand, Georges Clivaz sprayed water along a road leading to his property in Saint-Jean-d’Illac in Gironde as the blaze burned a few kilometers away.
“We’re doing this to slow down the fire’s advance; we want to save our homes,” he told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Although the village was evacuated on Friday, Clivaz said he and his family were trying to hold out.
“But the firefighters are telling us that in two or three hours the fire will be here.”
Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez warned “the situation remains very unfavorable” across France, where more than 250,000 people have been evacuated.
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