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Heat, evacuations, and firestorms
Wildfires in France and Spain have forced unprecedented evacuations as a new heatwave looms, with the NBC News report warning that another heat wave forecast to hit France and Spain could hamper efforts to control raging wildfires.
“French President Emmanuel Macron urged fire crews to "stay strong" as they battled Tuesday to bring a monster wildfire under control, warning that the fight will take time but vowing, "we will win this battle together”
teleSUR said more than 330,000 people were evacuated between Spain, France and Portugal due to megaincendios forestales, with temperatures above 40 °C and prolonged drought driving the fires.
teleSUR reported that the Comunidad de Madrid faced what Isabel Díaz Ayuso called «el peor incendio de la historia» after multiple ignition points, and that the flames advanced at a rate of three kilometers every 40 minutes.
In France, teleSUR said authorities ordered the preventive evacuation of almost 4,000 people in tourist zones on the Atlantic coast, while in Gironda firefighters stabilized a megaincendio that burned more than 42.000 hectáreas and required the evacuation of about 220.000 people.
The CNBC report said wildfires had burned nearly 104,000 acres in France and around 190,000 acres in Spain, forcing nearly 300,000 people to evacuate as temperatures were forecast to rise to 33 to 35 degrees Celsius in France.
How fire clouds form
The Independent en Español described a “firenado”, also known as tornado de fuego, as a rare but real phenomenon observed in France during the devastating wildfires around Bordeaux and in central Spain.
It quoted AccuWeather chief international forecaster Jason Nicholls explaining that “Los incendios forestales generan un calor intenso que hace que grandes cantidades de humo y aire caliente asciendan”.
The Independent en Español also quoted Nicholls on fire tornadoes, saying “En realidad, no son tornados, sino un tipo especial de remolino”.
In parallel, CNBC described the wildfires as a rare and dangerous “pyrocumulonimbus,” saying it can generate its own thunderstorms, winds, and whirlwinds and make the fire “erratic and unmanageable,” as firefighter Captain Nicolas Braz told AFP.
CNBC added that Stefan Doerr, a professor of wildland fire science at Swansea University, said wildfires aren’t unusual but that “three heatwaves this summer across the region have been unprecedented,” with the overall scale beyond effective dealing capacity.
What’s at stake next
As France and Spain brace for another heatwave, Al Jazeera reported that nearly 4,000 people were evacuated from tourist sites in the Lacanau area of the Gironde region, bringing the total who fled Gironde to well over a quarter of a million.
“The spread of wildfires in France and Spain that had come dangerously close to the cities of Bordeaux and Madrid appears to be slowing, authorities say, but they are bracing for yet another stifling heatwave this week, which could fan the flames of current blazes and ignite new ones”
Al Jazeera quoted Eric Brocardi, spokesperson for France’s national firefighters federation, saying “We are at a point of fragility,” and added that he said “We will continue attacking this fire despite the forecast rise in temperatures.”
NPR said authorities described the Gironde fire as stabilized, not fixed, warning it could still spread again as temperatures rose and humidity fell, while also reporting that 103 kilometers (64 miles) of firebreaks had been completed.
NPR reported that 93 firefighters had been injured while battling the blaze and said the precautionary evacuation order covered campsites, holiday villages, tourist residences and leisure parks around the resort of Lacanau.
In Spain, NPR said the fires forced roughly 330,000 people to evacuate and that Spain entered its fourth heat wave of the summer, with blazes still out of control including its largest on record, while the report noted that the Gironde fire was “wildly unpredictable” and had transformed into a self-feeding firestorm.
