France orders 4,000 more evacuated as fires displace a third of a million across south-west Europe

French au­thor­i­ties or­dered near­ly 4,000 more peo­ple to evac­u­ate from At­lantic coast tourist sites Tues­day as re­turn­ing heat threat­ened fire­fight­ers’ frag­ile hold on a vast wild­fire west of Bor­deaux, widen­ing what may be France’s largest peace­time evac­u­a­tion.

Fire crews held the blaze in the Gironde re­gion in check through a calm night, bring­ing flare-ups near coastal dunes un­der con­trol and keep­ing the burned area un­changed at 420 square kilo­me­tres (162 square miles). Au­thor­i­ties called the fire sta­bi­lized, but not con­tained, and said it was still ca­pa­ble of break­ing loose as tem­per­a­tures rose and hu­mid­i­ty fell.

Fresh flames erupt­ed lat­er Tues­day near Grand Cro­hot, a pop­u­lar va­ca­tion beach on the Lège-Cap-Fer­ret penin­su­la, lo­cal au­thor­i­ties said. Fire­fight­ers backed by wa­ter-drop­ping air­craft bat­tled the re­newed flames to keep them from spread­ing.

Across France and Spain, rough­ly 330,000 peo­ple have been dri­ven from homes and va­ca­tion sites by huge wild­fires. Spain braced for its fourth heat wave of the sum­mer, with sev­er­al blazes still burn­ing out of con­trol, in­clud­ing the largest in its record­ed his­to­ry.

Even so, Span­ish au­thor­i­ties be­gan lift­ing evac­u­a­tion and stay-at-home or­ders for thou­sands of peo­ple af­ter fire­fight­ers made progress overnight.

The Gironde fire has burned an area four times the size of Paris and forced 220,000 peo­ple to evac­u­ate. In­te­ri­or Min­is­ter Lau­rent Nuñez has said it is “very like­ly” the largest civil­ian evac­u­a­tion op­er­a­tion car­ried out in the coun­try out­side war.

Evac­u­a­tions don’t de­ter some va­ca­tion­ers

The pre­cau­tion­ary evac­u­a­tion or­der cov­ered camp­sites, hol­i­day vil­lages, tourist res­i­dences and leisure parks around the re­sort of La­canau, Gironde re­gion­al au­thor­i­ties said.

“We are at a point of fragili­ty,” Er­ic Bro­car­di, spokesper­son for France’s na­tion­al fire­fight­ers fed­er­a­tion, told the BFMTV broad­cast net­work Tues­day. “We will con­tin­ue at­tack­ing this fire de­spite the fore­cast rise in tem­per­a­tures.”

Even as near­by homes burned and au­thor­i­ties urged tourists to stay away, one fam­i­ly told Le Parisien news­pa­per it had gone ahead with its trip rather than for­feit a 4,000-eu­ro ($4,558) hol­i­day, while an­oth­er group de­bat­ed aban­don­ing a va­ca­tion that had cost 650 eu­ros ($741) each.

A fire mak­ing its own weath­er

At its most vi­o­lent, the Gironde blaze built a gar­gan­tu­an black thun­der­cloud, elec­tri­fied and lit from with­in. It gen­er­at­ed light­ning, vi­o­lent winds and new fires be­yond the orig­i­nal front. The phe­nom­e­non, known as a py­rocu­mu­lonim­bus cloud, was the first record­ed in France.

France’s na­tion­al weath­er ser­vice placed Gironde un­der a yel­low heat warn­ing be­gin­ning at mid­day Tues­day, fore­cast­ing in­land tem­per­a­tures of 33 to 35 C (91 to 95 F).

More than 1,160 square kilo­me­tres (448 square miles) have burned across France this year, ac­cord­ing to the In­te­ri­or Min­istry.

Eu­rope is the world’s fastest-warm­ing con­ti­nent, heat­ing at more than twice the glob­al av­er­age, ac­cord­ing to the Eu­ro­pean Union’s Coper­ni­cus cli­mate ser­vice. West­ern Eu­rope record­ed its hottest June on record, with ex­treme heat and wide­spread dry­ness con­tribut­ing to the spread and in­ten­si­fi­ca­tion of fires in France and Spain, Coper­ni­cus said.

Crews de­fend homes and cut fire­breaks

In Le Porge alone, west of Bor­deaux, the mu­nic­i­pal gov­ern­ment said about 150 homes were de­stroyed.

Of­fi­cials warned that smoul­der­ing veg­e­ta­tion, ris­ing tem­per­a­tures and falling hu­mid­i­ty could pro­duce fresh out­breaks along the fire’s vast perime­ter.

Mil­i­tary en­gi­neers and for­est-fire pre­ven­tion crews re­sumed cut­ting fire­breaks ear­ly Tues­day. Au­thor­i­ties said crews had com­plet­ed 103 kilo­me­tres (64 miles) of fire­breaks.

Nine­ty-three fire­fight­ers have been in­jured, the pre­fec­ture said.

Thou­sands re­turn as sec­ond fire stops ad­vanc­ing

In Lan­des, about 15,000 evac­uees — rough­ly half of those dis­placed here — were al­lowed home af­ter a sep­a­rate wild­fire stopped ad­vanc­ing.

“The fire is fixed, which is good news in the Lan­des,” French Pres­i­dent Em­manuel Macron said Mon­day evening. Re­gion­al au­thor­i­ties said that meant its ad­vance had stopped and no new out­breaks had been re­port­ed.

Those al­lowed back in­clud­ed res­i­dents of San­guinet, Par­en­tis-en-Born, Bis­car­rosse’s avi­a­tion vil­lage and a large camp­ground. Sev­er­al oth­er neigh­bour­hoods re­mained in­ac­ces­si­ble.

Au­thor­i­ties warned that the Lan­des fire was not ex­tin­guished. Resid­ual hot spots, wind and drought could cause flare-ups, and sur­veil­lance and damp­ing-down op­er­a­tions were ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue for days or weeks.

Thou­sands be­gin re­turn­ing in Spain

Span­ish fire­fight­ers made progress Tues­day, and au­thor­i­ties be­gan lift­ing evac­u­a­tion or­ders for at least 20,000 of the 79,000 peo­ple forced to flee over the week­end.

Fran­cis­co Martín, the cen­tral gov­ern­ment’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive in the Madrid re­gion, said or­ders would be lift­ed in 10 towns, al­low­ing about 20,000 evac­uees to re­turn home and end­ing stay-at-home or­ders for an­oth­er 14,000 peo­ple.

Res­i­dents of some vil­lages in Ávi­la were al­so be­ing al­lowed home, though au­thor­i­ties did not spec­i­fy how many. An­oth­er 6,000 peo­ple could re­turn af­ter a small­er fire near Tole­do was brought un­der con­trol, while sev­er­al thou­sand more went home in Castel­lón.

Hun­dreds of fire­fight­ers backed by mil­i­tary emer­gency brigades and wa­ter-drop­ping air­craft con­tin­ued bat­tling sev­er­al ma­jor wild­fires.

Smoke from the fires reached Madrid in re­cent days. Emer­gency ser­vices said res­i­dents in cen­tral and east­ern dis­tricts could smell smoke and ash.

Span­ish In­te­ri­or Min­is­ter Fer­nan­do Grande-Mar­las­ka said Tues­day that non­stop work through the night left him “rea­son­ably pos­i­tive,” though of­fi­cials warned that crews had on­ly a brief win­dow be­fore ex­treme heat re­turned.

Spain’s na­tion­al weath­er ser­vice said the coun­try was brac­ing for its fourth heat wave of the sum­mer, with tem­per­a­tures ex­pect­ed to ex­ceed 40 C (104 F) in some ar­eas.

The gov­ern­ment de­clared a na­tion­al emer­gency over the fires.

At least 13 peo­ple have died in wild­fires in Spain this year, mak­ing 2026 one of the coun­try’s dead­liest fire sea­sons in decades.

“I’ve been liv­ing in San Martín de Valdei­gle­sias for 20 years and I nev­er thought I would see this,” said Es­tel­la Costales, an evac­u­at­ed res­i­dent stay­ing at a tem­po­rary shel­ter in Brunete, near Madrid. “It’s un­for­tu­nate, but I nev­er thought I would see such de­struc­tion.”

Sur­round­ings of Madrid re­main at risk

The great­est con­cern re­mained two large fires that had at times come close to merg­ing in­to a sin­gle blaze in wood­ed hills about an hour’s dri­ve west of Madrid.

A fire in hilly, rur­al ter­rain in Ávi­la, west of Madrid, has be­come Spain’s largest on record, scorch­ing more than 500 square kilo­me­tres (193 square miles), the gov­ern­ment said.

Lo­cal weath­er ser­vices in Ávi­la al­so shared im­ages Tues­day of what they de­scribed as a py­rocu­mu­lonim­bus cloud over the blaze. Spain has seen these fire-gen­er­at­ed thun­der­storms form at least twice dur­ing wild­fires in re­cent years.

“Look at how the val­ley is burned. Look at the hous­es, the peo­ple,” said David Gon­za­lez, a 48-year-old gar­den­er who used his van to de­liv­er sup­plies to fire­fight­ers in Ávi­la.

“We are feel­ing a lot of anger and help­less­ness. It’s some­thing in­hu­man,” he said.

Fires have burned 1,530 square kilo­me­tres (590 square miles) this year in Spain, Ecol­o­gy Min­is­ter Sara Aage­sen said.

Span­ish Prime Min­is­ter Pe­dro Sánchez has called for a na­tion­al pact to fight wild­fires, say­ing cli­mate change is mak­ing them worse. — LEGE-CAP FER­RET, France (AP)

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Sto­ry by THOMAS ADAM­SON, MARK CARL­SON and EM­MA DA SIL­VA | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Thomas Adam­son re­port­ed from Paris. As­so­ci­at­ed Press jour­nal­ists Joseph Wil­son in Barcelona, Spain, and Iain Sul­li­van in Brunete, Spain, al­so con­tributed to this re­port.