Unchecked wildfires raging Saturday in France's southwest and near Spain's capital Madrid have forced nearly 260,000 people to flee and prompted Paris to deploy its military. France hustled 197,000 people from areas around Bordeaux – including vacation spots crowded this time of year – in what was "probably" the biggest peacetime evacuation the country has seen, its interior minister said. In Spain, where 60,000 people were evacuated from villages west of Madrid, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said the priority was "to save lives" as he visited the fire zone. Officials in Madrid had earlier given a higher estimate of around 70,000 people evacuated. In the Spanish town of Brunete, west of Madrid, mayor Mar Nicolas told AFP she was "very worried". "Every year there are fires, but this one has been tremendous," she said. "It is a catastrophe." A separate wildfire near the eastern Spanish city of Valencia killed one person before firefighters brought it under control.
The first near Madrid are biting into the Spanish capital's surrounding towns, such as Robledo De Chavela, just 60 kilometres west. © Handout / Spanish Guardia Civil/AFP
Overstretched firefighters in Spain and France battling around the clock for days have been unable to contain the infernos, though authorities in both countries suggested the intensity of some of the blazes had notched down. Two French firefighters died earlier this week near Bordeaux. French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said the blaze in the Gironde region where Bordeaux is located was less intense and no longer a "convective" type of fire that self-fuels through rising currents. Officials in Madrid also said the fires had advanced little overnight and decreased in intensity. But the battles were far from won. The threat in Gironde "remains very serious," said top regional official Sophie Brocas. Spain's Sanchez warned: "We are going to have some complex hours ahead." Jacqueline Villafranca, a 38-year-old who evacuated to Madrid on Friday, said that when smoke filled her village of Navalagamella "I thought everything was going to burn, the house and everything". "Here you can breathe normally – yesterday it was unbearable," she said, sitting in a gymnasium-turned-shelter. Tinderbox conditions The fires in Spain and France advanced quickly because of tinderbox conditions worsened by successive heatwaves the two countries have experienced since May. Scientists say global warming is increasing droughts and causing weather emergencies to become more extreme and more frequent. Europe is the fastest-warming continent due to climate change.
