ARCACHON, France (AP) — Massive forest fires burned out of control in southwestern France and central Spain on Friday, prompting authorities to evacuate an estimated 200,000 people from their homes. Some even fled by boat when flames swept through the touristic area on France’s Atlantic coast.Dozens of firefighters were injured, authorities said in France, but no deaths were reported in either country.Some 141,000 fled homes in the Gironde and Landes departments in France, the French interior ministry said. In central Spain, 60,000 were forced from their homes, the Spanish interior ministry said.France’s Interior minister Laurent Nunez said that the large wildfire that ravaged large swaths of land in southwestern France in now heading toward the city of Bordeaux.Speaking to French TV channel Tf1, Nunez said the wildfire that earlier in the day forced the evacuation of the Cap Ferret peninsula has swept across 140 square kilometers, with 110,000 people fleeing their homes in the Gironde region.“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,” Nunez said.
“It is now moving east, toward the Bordeaux metropolitan area. We are going to reorganize our response so we can fight it from the ground and prevent it from advancing toward Bordeaux.”Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron has asked the Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu to activate the government’s crisis response unit, and has instructed the armed forces to mobilize in order to provide the maximum possible reinforcement to the civilian emergency services. Asked whether Bordeaux is under threat, Nunez said: “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.”The blaze started on Wednesday near Cap Ferret peninsula on France’s Atlantic coast.. Located just 60 kilometers (37 miles) from Bordeaux, the peninsula normally offers stunning landscapes and sandy beaches as well as oyster-farming villages and upmarket resorts. Some people fled the flames by boat.A separate wildfire broke out in Landes, causing 31,000 evacuations, while both France and Spain asked fellow European Union members for help.“It’s quite impressive and even frightening," said Laurent Moretti, a resident in…
About 44,000 people were evacuated from France's Cap Ferret peninsula, while around 40,000 people in Spain's Madrid region were told to leave or stay indoors as wildfires spread.
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