BORDEAUX, France — Emergency crews worked through the night and into Monday morning in a desperate effort to contain massive wildfires bearing down on the French city of Bordeaux.
Across France, approximately 220,000 residents have been forced to flee their homes. In neighboring Spain, the situation is equally dire — more than 75,000 people have been evacuated, and another 30,000 have been told to stay indoors, according to authorities who spoke over the weekend as a powerful summer heatwave continues to grip much of Europe.
Jerome Steffe, the mayor of Cestas — a suburb just outside the main Bordeaux city limits — described the scope of the disaster in stark terms on Monday. “This is a fire of a size never seen before,” he said. Thousands of people have been forced out of both their homes and vacation properties in Cestas and surrounding communities.
The fires first broke out last week near the Atlantic coast and have since advanced to within 15 kilometers — roughly 10 miles — of the entry points into Bordeaux’s main metropolitan area.
Making matters worse, forecasters from France’s national weather office say temperatures in Bordeaux could climb to 37 degrees Celsius — about 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit — later this week, raising fears that conditions will become even more dangerous for firefighters and residents alike.
“It’s a race against time before the heatwave returns,” Mayor Steffe added.
President Emmanuel Macron’s government was set to take up the wildfire crisis at a cabinet meeting Monday.
Data from Reuters Climate Monitor shows that average high temperatures across the Aquitaine region have reached 32.2 degrees Celsius so far this July — a full 7.3 degrees above the historical monthly average recorded between 1961 and 1990.
