More than 300,000 people have fled their homes and holiday accommodation as wildfires tear through south-west France and central Spain, forcing families into gymnasiums and exhibition halls on camp beds overnight.
France is the biggest victim of the fires, with forty-two thousand hectares already burnt and more than two hundred and twenty thousand evacuated from the area affected by the blaze near Bordeaux. Over fifty-five thousand residents have been ordered to leave their homes in Gironde after the fire spread throughout the entire region during the night.
Firefighter Capt. Nicolas Braz said the blaze generated a rare “pyro cumulonimbus” cloud, creating its own winds and whirlwinds that left it, in his words, erratic and unmanageable. France’s interior minister called it probably the largest peacetime evacuation the country has ever carried out.
Spain declares its first national emergency
Over 90,000 people have been forced to leave their homes in the Madrid area and the Ávila area, and new orders for evacuations are now in place near Toledo.
For the first time ever Spain has announced a national emergency because of the fires. A man died in a fire in Manises, Valencia. He was found in a car in a ditch according to the interior ministry.
Hundreds of firefighters are currently trying to put out fires that are spreading throughout the hot summer days fuelled by climate change. France sends in 1,500 troops and 1.5 million masks to protect the French population from the smoke in the air, as the fires continue to rage on. The fire service in both France and Spain said the fires were only partially controlled despite the reinforcements.
