French Fire Heads Toward Bordeaux as Spain Battles Record Blaze

(Bloomberg) — French and Spanish firefighters preparing to battle wildfires for a sixth consecutive day face worsening weather conditions as temperatures are forecast to rise further.

With more than 300,000 people evacuated across the two countries through the weekend, a French official said an uncontrolled fire in the southwest Atlantic coast’s Gironde region is headed toward Bordeaux, an urban center of 265,000 people.

“This is a fire that is completely erratic, that has no consistency, it comes and goes” and feeds on itself, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez told broadcaster France 2 on Sunday evening, declining to rule out that the blaze will reach Bordeaux. “We must look at things calmly of course, but also with realism.”

Temperatures are expected to rise on Monday in central Spain and from Tuesday in France. French and Spanish officials have said the fires are so strong that they are creating their own microclimates. 

In central Spain, the largest blazes have spread across 77,000 hectares (190,000 acres) located between 50 and 100 kilometers (about 30 and 60 miles) south and west of Madrid. Another major Spanish fire is burning some 50 kilometers north of the coastal city of Valencia. 

One of the fires outside Madrid, in the province of Ávila, accounts for 50,000 hectares of the total, making it the largest wildfire in recorded Spanish history, according to Environmental Minister Sara Aagesen. This burned land was mostly forested hills, while the affected areas south of Madrid are mostly scrubland and farmland. 

As many as 41 Spanish highways were cut, with some 60,000 people evacuated from their homes in recent days and some 30,000 ordered to shelter in place, in part to keep roads clear for firefighters and soldiers. A special military unit that specializes in natural disasters has deployed 1,500 soldiers. 

Spain’s fires were fueled by a combination of weather, mainly because the country suffered three heat waves between June and mid-July, depleting soil moisture, along with denser-than-usual vegetation following an unseasonably rainy winter. Similar reasons are being cited in France. 

Weather experts say heat waves are starting earlier in the year and lasting longer than they did historically because of climate change. Last year was the worst ever for European wildfires, with more than 1 million hectares burned. 

Prevention and woodland management would have to be considerably ramped up in Spain to avoid future fires of similar scale, said Victor de Resco de Dios, a professor at the University of Lleida. He estimated the work would cost about €3 billion ($3.4 billion) a year. 

In villages of the Madrid region and Ávila, the scale of the destruction is emerging. At a campsite beside the Pelayos reservoir, only the metal frames of tents remain, standing amid rows of charred tree trunks stripped of their leaves by the fire. Fire smoke degraded air quality in many neighborhoods of the capital over the weekend. 

–With assistance from Laura Millan.

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