French President Emmanuel Macron will chair a crisis cabinet meeting on Monday as massive wildfires continue to advance towards the south-western city of Bordeaux, while forecasts of another heatwave threaten to worsen firefighting efforts.
The expanding blaze is now about 15 kilometres (nine miles) from Bordeaux, Mayor Thomas Cazenave said, reports BBC.
Earlier, he stated that authorities had no plans to evacuate the city’s population of around 850,000.
Wildfires have swept across large parts of Europe over the past week, with France and Spain among the hardest-hit countries. More than 330,000 people have been evacuated across the two nations.
On Saturday, Macron said France would “rebuild” and that his government would “be there for as long as is needed”.
In France’s south-west, tens of thousands of residents have already left their homes. France’s Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said conditions remained “very unfavourable”, adding that the fire was “moving erratically” towards Bordeaux.
Weather forecasts indicate temperatures could reach 40C in parts of France from Tuesday, raising concerns that the extreme heat will further complicate efforts to contain the blaze.
The country’s largest wildfire, burning in the Gironde region, has generated an unprecedented “pyrocumulonimbus” — a giant fire thunderstorm driven by its own winds and lightning, according to the National Firefighters Federation of France (FNSPF).
“We don’t know how the blaze will spread, the fire front is constantly shifting. We cannot fight it directly,” said FNSPF spokesman Eric Brocardi.
“It’s a David-versus-Goliath scenario.”
Brocardi added that bringing the fire under control would require it to rain “heavily for three days” or firefighters successfully steering the flames towards an area where they could burn out naturally, such as the sea.
The wildfires have caused extensive damage across France.
Around 42,000 hectares have been destroyed in the south-west, making it one of the country’s largest forest fires since World War Two. Nationwide, approximately 98,000 hectares have burned since the beginning of the year.
More than 220,000 people have been evacuated from south-western France.
Meanwhile, firefighters in Spain continued battling a fresh wildfire on Sunday near the eastern coastal city of Valencia, where about 15,000 residents have been forced to leave their homes.
Pilar Bernabe, the central government’s delegate to Valencia, said the fire had been “very intense” and warned that weather conditions were expected to deteriorate.
Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska, who is due to visit the affected areas in Valencia on Monday, said the fires were spreading slowly.
“Difficult hours lie ahead,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said during a visit to the fire-hit area in Ávila province, west of Madrid.
He also called for “a major public pact on the climate emergency”.
Spain’s King Felipe VI described the destruction caused by the fires as “incalculable” as he visited an emergency shelter in Villamanta, south-west of Madrid.
Sara Aagesen, Spain’s Minister for Ecological Transition, said on Sunday that around 77,000 hectares had been affected by the wildfires nationwide.
She added that the wildfire in the Ávila region is the largest in Spain’s recent history.
Among those forced to flee was 50-year-old Olga Congacha, who evacuated her village of Robledo de Chavela, west of Madrid.
She said she felt “panicked” when she was ordered to leave her home. “I didn’t know whether to cry or what. It was a moment when you feel awful,” she added.
After briefly returning home on Sunday to collect medicine, Congacha said the streets were deserted and her house had been covered in ash.
Authorities said strong winds were pushing the wildfires near Madrid southwards and away from the capital, although the advancing flames have forced additional villages to evacuate.
More than 90,000 people have been evacuated from the regions surrounding Madrid and Ávila.
