Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said yesterday difficult hours lay ahead in the fight against the country’s wildfires, but officials had seen positive developments in controlling the blazes around Madrid.
Fire crews in France and Spain battling unchecked wildfires that have forced more than 300,000 people to flee were overwhelmed as the unpredictable blazes advanced.
France’s southwestern city of Bordeaux, at the heart of a region of vineyards, was under threat, with a major highway and train lines cut.
In Spain more villages in the fire zone raging west of Madrid were emptied during the night -- and a new front opened near the coastal city of Valencia.
Interior Minister Laurent Nunez wrote on X that “the situation remains very unfavourable” for fires across France
“Difficult hours lie ahead admittedly, but the update we received here ... indicates that the night was very positive regarding the fire’s progression, its containment, and the firefighting efforts,” Sanchez told reporters on a visit to the Avila area affected by fires.
Firefighting planes from Italy and Portugal have been helping Spanish teams on the ground battling to control the blazes. Weather conditions have complicated their efforts.
France was faced with “a historic situation”, Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu said late Saturday.
The fire in the southwest and resulting evacuation operation now rank among the biggest seen since World War II, authorities said, with more than 250,000 people ordered out of the danger zone.
Interior Minister Laurent Nunez yesterday wrote on X that “the situation remains very unfavourable” for fires across France. More than 5,200 firefighters, soldiers and gendarmes have been mobilised for the inferno in the Gironde region that was moving closer to Bordeaux.
Cestas -- a village close to Bordeaux’s southwestern edge -- was “deserted” as it braced for flames, with only a few of its 17,000 residents resisting evacuation, its mayor Jerome Steffe told the BFMTV broadcaster.
“This fire is unpredictable and each time we think we’ve got on top of it unfortunately it surprises us in the worst possible way,” he said. “Right now, it’s impossible to say where the fire will end up.”
The wildfire has forced nearby peak-season holiday spots along the Atlantic coast to be evacuated, and swath of land reduced to cinders is equivalent to four times the area of Paris. Houses in the village of Le Porge, near the ocean, were gutted, AFPTV images showed.
