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Fire crews and planes wrestled to bring a monster wildfire in southwest France under control on Monday before a forecast jump in temperatures complicates the effort against a blaze that has burned an area four times the size of Paris.
Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said the fire had stopped growing, a first glimmer of hope since the inferno forced a staggering 220,000 people to flee in the region around the city of Bordeaux.
But with woodlands still smouldering, the minister cautioned that the battle isn’t yet won.
“It hasn’t progressed during the night,” Nunez said. “We have to remain very concentrated, very determined, to go at any moment.”
He spoke after French President Emmanuel Macron held a crisis meeting on Monday focusing on the massive firefighting effort in the Gironde region and on wildfires elsewhere.
The Gironde prefecture said the situation overnight remained “globally stable” — a change from previous days when officials said flames had crept to within 15 kilometres of the outskirts of Bordeaux, a historic city of 268,000 people, and generated self-feeding firestorms with lightning bolts that ignited more blazes.
No new evacuations were announced on Monday. But with France about to enter its peak August tourist season, Gironde authorities worked to keep vacationers away, banning holiday camps for children and for people with disabilities. Nunez also urged people to avoid the region, popular for its Atlantic beaches and some of France’s largest woodlands.
In the adjacent southwestern Landes region, where hundreds of firefighters have been making progress against another virulent but smaller fire, the prefecture said some rain fell overnight and described the conditions as “favourable” for firefighting but also cautioned that they could change.
With thousands of firefighters on the ground and rotations of water- and retardant-dropping aircraft, it became a race against time before an expected heat wave that could make fighting flames more difficult. The national weather service forecast temperatures above 35 C in the southwest on Tuesday and likely higher on Wednesday.
“We know temperatures are going to climb again, that we’ll enter a phase of intense heat and so we really have to remain very cautious,” Nunez said. “As long as the fire isn’t contained, the situation remains unfavourable.”
Crews using earth-movers tore up strips of forest and scrubland to create barren spaces, intended to stop fires from spreading. Farmers were keeping fire crews supplied with water, transporting it to them in tanks.
Around a dozen countries have provided planes, helicopters, firefighters and other assistance to both France and Spain, which is also fighting unprecedented blazes. All told, fires in both countries have forced more than 330,000 people to flee.
Macron didn’t immediately comment after the government crisis meeting he presided over. In a weekend post on X, he pledged long-term support for fire-hit communities, saying: “We will rebuild, we will repair and we will be present for as long as necessary.”
Residents rally
Julien Hochar is a social worker in Saint Médard, a suburb of Bordeaux. He fled overnight Friday after getting a notice on his phone. He says he made a point to spread news of the evacuation to elderly people in his community and drove some of them out of town as well.
The first night they arrived at the Bordeaux Exhibition Centre, there weren’t enough beds.
“We didn’t sleep a lot the first night. So it was quite a crazy first night,” he told CBC’s As it Happens.
As It Happens8:15 Wildfire evacuees look out for each other in Bordeaux shelter
As wildfires rage in southwest France, more than 220,000 have been forced to flee their homes. Evacuee Julien Hochar spoke to As It Happens guest host Loren McGinnis from the Bordeaux Exhibition Centre, where he says he and his community members are taking care of each other.
That’s no longer the case. Now everyone has beds and food, he said, adding that there are doctors on site, toys for the kids and lots of volunteers helping.
“Right now it’s time to eat, so people are chatting together around the tables and everyone is very helpful with one another,” Hochar said. “There are a lot of people who came to help everyone. We have enough food and water people are very nice.”
At the moment, Saint Médard remains untouched by fire, but the evacuees don’t yet know when they’ll return.
“Everyone is a bit tired,” Hochar said.
He says he’s never seen anything like these fires in France, but is warning the younger people that this may be what their future looks like thanks to climate change.
“I’m sad to tell them but I think they need to be prepared.”
Spain battling its biggest-ever fires
In Spain, wildfires have burned out of control around Madrid and in the Valencia region. Authorities evacuated 79,000 people and confined 30,000 others to their homes.
In both Spain and France, the exceptional scale of the fires — fuelled by heat waves that hit especially hard and early this year, making forests and scrubland tinder-dry — are driving calls for stronger action against climate change.
“What we are experiencing is not a series of isolated incidents. It is the consequence of a climate emergency that is making wildfires even more violent, heat waves more frequent,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said.
A fire raging in hilly, rural terrain in Avila, west of Madrid, has become Spain’s largest on record, scorching 50,000 hectares, the government said. That’s five times the size of Barcelona.
“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 run supplies to firefighters in Avila.
“We are feeling lot of anger and helplessness. It’s something inhuman,” he said.
Fires have burned 153,000 hectares this year in Spain — six times the area scorched by blazes in the first half of 2025, said Sara Aagesen, the ecology minister.
The minister said that another heat wave forecast from Tuesday — which would be Spain’s fourth so far this year — could ratchet up the fire danger. Spain’s weather agency forecast temperatures above 40 C.
Canadair planes combat fire in Italy
A wildfire driven by strong winds broke out on Sunday afternoon near Peschici, in Italy’s southern Puglia region, burning pine forest and scrub and forcing the evacuation of about 300 tourists from beaches and campgrounds, authorities said.
The Coast Guard evacuated tourists by sea to nearby Vieste, where authorities opened temporary shelters.
Three Canadair water-bombing planes and fire crews on the ground continued Monday to battle the blaze, which revived memories of devastating wildfires that hit the same coastal area in 2007.
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