Wildfires across southern France and parts of Spain have burned more than 119,000 hectares, leading to widespread evacuations and prompting high-level government meetings in both countries. The fires, which intensified last week amid high temperatures, have deployed thousands of emergency personnel to the affected regions.
In France, a fire that started Wednesday in the southwestern Gironde region has burned 42,000 hectares, according to local news outlets. The blaze has resulted in one of the country’s largest evacuations in its history, French broadcaster France 24 reported.
French President Emmanuel Macron scheduled a cabinet meeting for Monday to address the situation. On Saturday, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez stated on the social media platform X that the situation remained “highly unfavorable.” He described the Gironde fire as having become “extremely virulent and unpredictable again” before its activity lessened.
Sébastien Lecornu, the French Prime Minister, described the wildfires as a “historic situation” for the country on Saturday, noting that nearly 100,000 hectares have burned since the beginning of the year. Finance Minister Roland Lescure told reporters the event was “like a clap of thunder for an area which could have done without this,” referring to the economic impact on the region.
In Spain, fires have affected 77,000 hectares in the Avila and Toledo areas west of Madrid. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez was scheduled to visit fire-hit areas in Valencia.
According to Minister Nunez, a combined force of 2,500 firefighters, 1,500 military personnel, and nearly 1,200 police have been deployed to combat the fires.
The Gironde prefecture, the main government body for the Bordeaux area, reported Monday that the “situation remained generally stable during the night from Sunday to Monday, with no major developments to report.”
Firefighter Captain Nicolas Braz described the Gironde fire to news agency AFP as a “pyrocumulonimbus,” a fire cloud that can generate its own weather systems, making it difficult to control.
Stefan Doerr, a professor of wildland fire science at Swansea University, spoke to CNBC about factors contributing to the fires’ intensity. He cited climate change and landscape management as primary issues.
Doerr said the abandonment of agricultural land in parts of southern Europe has allowed flammable vegetation to spread. “If we have these extreme weather conditions, these extreme droughts, if there is an ignition, it just becomes much more difficult to fight,” he stated.
Doerr also noted that many European forests are now dense conifer plantations, which he said are more prone to wildfires than a more natural landscape would be.
“The overall scale of the events now is beyond the capability of dealing with it effectively,” Doerr said, adding that while firefighting capacity in Europe has grown, more progress is needed in land management to reduce wildfire risk before fires start.
