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Evacuations Across France, Spain
More than 200,000 people fled raging wildfires in southwestern France and central Spain on Friday, with some escaping by boat as authorities evacuated an estimated 200,000 people from their homes.
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In France, the French interior ministry said 141,000 people fled homes in the Gironde and Landes departments, while the Spanish interior ministry said 60,000 were forced from their homes in central Spain.
France’s Interior minister Laurent Nunez said the wildfire that earlier forced the evacuation of the Cap Ferret peninsula had swept across 140 square kilometers and was moving east toward the Bordeaux metropolitan area.
Nunez told French TV channel Tf1 that “We learned in the middle of the afternoon that, following the wind shift, it had become a large, self-sustaining fire that is extremely difficult to bring under control,” and he said the response would be reorganized to fight it from the ground.
The AP reported that no deaths were reported in either country, while authorities said dozens of firefighters were injured in France.
EU Help and Political Voices
Spain declared a national emergency in the Madrid region and in the province of Avila late on Thursday, a measure DW said aimed to speed up deployment of resources and transfer the crisis response to the military emergency unit of the Spanish Armed Forces.
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez posted on X that “the government has deployed every available resource to stop the terrible fires currently affecting numerous areas: Avila, Leon, Toledo, Madrid and other parts of Spain,” and he visited a fire-ravaged area in Guadalajara where more than 30 villages were evacuated.
Across the border, President Emmanuel Macron said France invoked the EU’s civil protection mechanism to ask for help, and DW reported he posted on X that France would soon receive “two Croatian Canadair aircraft, two Portuguese Air Tractors and two heavy-lift Black Hawk helicopters from the Czech Republic and Slovakia.”
In France, authorities evacuated 7,000 people north of Cap Ferret as a precaution on Thursday, bringing the total number of evacuees in the area to 12,000, and DW said fires had ravaged around 2,000 hectares by Wednesday.
The BBC said European Commission officials had pre-positioned a fleet of nearly 30 planes and helicopters and 800 firefighters across Europe, but it said the effort had not been enough to contain fires described as historic.
What’s at Risk Next
The AP said Macron asked Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu to activate the government’s crisis response unit and instructed the armed forces to mobilize to provide maximum reinforcement to civilian emergency services.
“Nick Beake Europe Correspondent I was at briefing in Brussels last month when European Commission officials spoke of their concern that wildfire season had started earlier this year”
Nunez told French TV channel Tf1 that “For the time being, no. We will, of course, do everything we can to protect it using ground resources, including requisitioned military assets and our firefighters,” as the wildfire was heading toward the Bordeaux metropolitan area.
In Spain, the BBC reported that the blazes were being described as unprecedented in the struggle to contain current fires, and it said every effort would be needed in the days and weeks to come.
Euronews reported that in Spain the government declared a national emergency for wildfires for the first time, with the Minister of the Interior assuming direct coordination of firefighting resources as merged fires near Madrid and Ávila displaced or confined 60,000 people.
Euronews also said the main blaze in France had consumed 125 square kilometres and that around 1,500 people escaped the peninsula by sea to Arcachon aboard water taxis and ferries, underscoring how evacuation and containment remained central to the next phase.
