Gironde Wildfire Reaches Bordeaux Suburbs, France Evacuates Airport Area and Mobilizes Soldiers

Since the Gironde blaze merged into one uncontrollable fire earlier this week, the danger has moved closer to Bordeaux itself. French authorities on Saturday ordered evacuations in parts of three western suburbs of the city, including the area around Bordeaux airport, according to Newsday and the Associated Press.

Sophie Brocas, who heads the local administration covering La Nouvelle-Aquitaine and Gironde, said on X that the communities of Le Haillan, Eysines and Merignac were being cleared out, according to the Guardian's live coverage of the story via Reuters.

The new orders add to a rapidly growing evacuation count. French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said more than 141,000 people have now been told to leave the Gironde and Landes regions since the fires broke out earlier in the week. Combined with 60,000 evacuated west of Madrid, roughly 200,000 people across the two countries have been forced from their homes.

"The fires which are hitting our country have reached a level that has never been seen before," Lecornu wrote on X, according to the Guardian. He said evacuation orders "must be respected without delay."

Fire Is Now Making Its Own Weather

Lecornu described the Gironde blaze as so intense it's generating its own wind patterns, a phenomenon that makes fires far harder to predict and contain. French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez told TF1 that the fire has burned across 140 square kilometers and shifted direction with the wind, according to the Associated Press.

"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."

President Emmanuel Macron activated the government's crisis response unit and ordered the armed forces to mobilize in support of civilian firefighters, the AP reported. Hundreds of soldiers are being sent into the Gironde region Saturday, along with 1.5 million face masks to protect residents and responders from smoke inhalation, according to Newsday.

Spain Gets a Break in the Weather

Across the border, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez visited a command post west of Madrid on Saturday and said cooler, calmer conditions were giving fire crews "a window of opportunity" to get the upper hand, according to Newsday. Madrid's regional government reported the fires had decreased in intensity as winds and temperatures dropped.

Sánchez said Spain has already burned through 130,000 hectares of forest this year, well above the 100,000-hectare annual average of the past decade. Spanish firefighters told the AP the blazes moved so fast and violently in some areas that crews couldn't attack them directly, forcing a more defensive strategy.

No Deaths, But Dozens Hurt

Despite the scale of the evacuations and the panic of people fleeing by car, boat, and on foot, French and Spanish authorities report no fatalities in either country so far. Dozens of French firefighters have been injured, according to the AP, though officials haven't released a precise count or breakdown of the injuries.

Italy has sent Canadair water-dumping aircraft to help fight the blazes, part of a broader European mutual aid response, according to Newsday.

What's Driving It

Both countries point to the same underlying cause: an unusually early and severe heat wave that has dried out forests and scrubland into what Spanish officials describe as tinderbox conditions. Record-shattering temperatures across Europe this year have been amplified by the long-term effects of climate change, a conclusion echoed by officials in both governments, according to Newsday.

Whether the fire's self-sustaining wind pattern will keep pushing it toward Bordeaux's urban core or whether firefighters reinforced by soldiers can hold the line at the western suburbs remained uncertain. Bordeaux airport remains inside the evacuation zone, and no timeline for reopening it or lifting the suburb evacuations had been announced as of Saturday.