LEGE-CAP FERRET, France — French authorities ordered nearly 4,000 people evacuated Tuesday from tourist sites on France’s Atlantic coast as returning heat threatened firefighters’ fragile hold on a vast wildfire west of Bordeaux.
The order underscored a wildfire emergency of exceptional scale across southwestern Europe.
Fires in France and Spain have forced roughly 330,000 people to evacuate. Spain braced for its fourth heat wave of the summer, with several blazes still out of control, including its largest on record.
Firefighters held the French blaze in check through a calm night, bringing flare-ups near coastal dunes under control and keeping the burned area unchanged at 162 square miles.
Authorities described the Gironde fire as stabilized, not fixed, meaning it could still spread again as temperatures rose and humidity fell.
The precautionary evacuation order covered campsites, holiday villages, tourist residences and leisure parks around the resort of Lacanau, including Lacanau Ocean and both shores of Lacanau lake, Gironde regional authorities said.
“We are at a point of fragility,” Eric Brocardi, spokesperson for France’s national firefighters federation, told BFMTV on Tuesday. “We will continue attacking this fire despite the forecast rise in temperatures.”
France’s national weather service placed Gironde under a yellow heat warning from midday Tuesday, forecasting inland temperatures of 33 to 35 Celsius (91 to 95 Fahrenheit). Southeast winds were expected across Gironde, with westerly sea breezes along the coast.
More than 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 and the World Meteorological Organization.
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.
The Gironde blaze has been raging since last week and has proven wildly unpredictable, transforming at times into a self-feeding firestorm. It has burned an area four times the size of Paris and prompted the evacuation of 220,000 people.
Officials warned that smoldering vegetation, rising temperatures and falling humidity could produce fresh outbreaks along the vast perimeter.
Military engineers and forest-fire prevention crews resumed work early Tuesday on firebreaks designed to prevent the flames from spreading. Authorities said 103 kilometers (64 miles) of firebreaks had been completed.
A total of 93 firefighters have been injured, the prefecture said.
The A63 highway remained partly closed, while rail traffic south of Bordeaux was suspended except on the route toward Toulouse.
Thousands return as second fire stops advancing
In neighboring Landes, thousands of evacuees were allowed home after a separate wildfire stopped advancing. The fire had displaced more than 30,000 residents and vacationers.
“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 been stopped and there were no new fire starts.
About 15,000 people were authorized to return home Monday night in Sanguinet, Parentis-en-Born and some parts of Biscarrosse.
Residents of Biscarrosse’s aviation village and a large campground were among those allowed back, although several other neighborhoods remained inaccessible.
The return marked a significant step for communities evacuated as flames swept through forests and tourist areas during the height of the summer vacation season.
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 possibly weeks.
Spain braces for worsening conditions
Hundreds of firefighters backed by military emergency brigades and water-dropping aircraft continued battling several major wildfires in Spain.
Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said Tuesday that nonstop work through the night left him “reasonably positive,” but warned that conditions could deteriorate as temperatures rose again.
Spain’s national weather service said the country was bracing for its fourth heat wave of the summer, with temperatures expected to exceed 104 F in some areas.
Authorities have evacuated about 79,000 people and ordered another 30,000 to remain in their homes. The government declared a national emergency over the fires.
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.
Another fire in the eastern province of Castellón also forced mass evacuations.
A fire burning through hilly, rural terrain in Ávila, west of Madrid, has become Spain’s largest on record, scorching more than 193 square miles, the government said.
“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 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.
