More than 80,000 people flee as wildfires spread in south-west France and Spain

Lacanau - France

 by Jon Henley in Paris and Sam Jones in Madrid

 ‘Unpredictable’ blaze forces evacuation of holiday spot Cap Ferret and Spain declares emergency over fires near Madrid

 

More than 80,000 people have fled huge wildfires in Spain and France as Madrid declared a national emergency and French authorities ordered the total evacuation, by land and sea, of one of the country’s best-known holiday spots.

Authorities in south-west France ordered the Cap Ferret peninsula on the Atlantic coast to be evacuated “village by village” in the face of an “intense, highly unpredictable” wildfire that has burned through more than 12,500 hectares (30,900 acres) of forest.

Spain’s government declared its first national emergency for a wildfire as two large blazes merged into one outside Madrid and a third was on the verge of joining them, amid searing heat and tinder-dry conditions across much of southern Europe

 

Both countries sought EU help. “This is the worst wildfire in our region’s history,” said Madrid’s regional leader, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, describing “an unprecedented situation: a perfect storm of extremely high temperatures and relentless winds”.

More than 44,000 people had been evacuated in two days to escape the Cap Ferret fire, the Gironde prefecture said, including thousands of holidaymakers in campsites and rental homes. Boats ferried hundreds off piers on the peninsula on Friday as the blaze threatened to cut off the only road to it.

A volunteer guides holidaymakers evacuated from Cap Ferret after they arrive by boat in Arcachon. Photograph: Romain Perrocheau/AFP/Getty

Scientists say climate breakdown is triggering more frequent and more extreme weather events, evaporating soils and waterways, fuelling wildfires and leading to thousands of excess deaths. Europe is heating at about twice the global average rate.

About 800 firefighters and four water-bombing planes were battling the Gironde blaze north of Arcachon Bay, but the fire, which began on Wednesday near the village of Saumos 25 miles (40km) west of Bordeaux, was not yet stabilised.

Numerous roads in the area, including those leading to Cap Ferret – popular with French and international holidaymakers, and home to the villas of many celebrities and millionaires – were closed to all but essential traffic. Eighty houses had burned.

“I’ve seen plenty of fires before, but never one of this intensity,” Jean Mazodier, 86, who owns 150 hectares of forest and was evacuated from his home at 6am as the fire neared the peninsula, told Le Monde. “Everything’s burned. It’s like losing a child.”

A second fire raging in the region, farther south near the popular holiday resort of Biscarrosse, had also burned through more than 2,500 hectares, the Landes prefect, Gilles Clavreul, said on Friday, and led to the evacuation of about 25,000 people.

 

More than 600 firefighters were struggling to contain that blaze, Clavreul said. “The fire front looks very bad,” he added. “There are a great many new fire starts ahead of the main blaze. The situation is highly dynamic and unfavourable.”

In 2022, a wildfire burned more than 30,000 hectares in France’s south-west, forcing 50,000 evacuations. In parched conditions and fanned by strong winds, the two latest blazes have torn through coastal pine forests with flames up to 10 metres (33ft) high.

France’s president, ​Emmanuel Macron, said he had activated the EU’s civil protection mechanism as the country, which has endured three almost back-to-back heatwaves since May, battled numerous wildfires mainly in the south-west and south-east.

“We will soon be able to count ‌on reinforcements from two Croatian aircraft, two Portuguese planes, as well as two heavy helicopters from the Czech Republic and Slovakia,” said Macron, who described the situation as “extremely intense”.

 

France’s interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, said on Friday that 32 wildfires of varying size and intensity were burning across France, with 50,000 hectares scorched already so far this year – nearly four times the total by the same date last year.

About 800 firefighters were battling a blaze in the south-eastern Var area, where weather conditions were improving, Nuñez said, allowing some firefighting resources, including water-bombing planes, to be redeployed to the south-west.

 

The severity of fires in the EU has broken records for the time of year, data from the European Forest Fire Information System shows, with about twice as much land burned by 22 July than the average for that date over the past two decades.

Spain’s government declared a national emergency on Thursday evening after wildfires ⁠threatened communities near the capital and in the neighbouring province of Ávila, forcing more than 19,000 people to evacuate overnight and on Friday.

 

The ​interior ministry said the decision was taken because of the simultaneous outbreak of several fires, adverse weather conditions and ⁠the need to mobilise extensive resources from several public administrations.

A national emergency, which allows central government to assume overall control of powers and responsibilities that are usually the domain of Spain’s self-governing regions, has only been declared once before, during the countrywide blackout of April 2025.

The regional government of Madrid requested assistance, describing the situation as one of “extreme gravity”. It said at least four active fires could advance “beyond current extinguishing capacity”. The fires remained uncontained on Friday.

Spanish authorities said on Friday afternoon there was “very little time left” before the blaze in Madrid, already made up of two merged fires, combined with the Ávila fire. “This is very bad news,” said Nicanor Sen, the central government’s delegate to the Castilla y León region to the north-west of Madrid.

Jose Cobos, who fled his home about 30 miles south-west of Madrid on Friday morning with his wife and three dogs, told Antena 3 television: “The smoke was incredibly thick. You couldn’t breathe.”

Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, chaired an emergency response meeting at the Moncloa palace on Friday morning as the state meteorological office warned that the danger of more fires remained very high or extreme across much of the country.

“We’re living through a dramatic situation, not just in various Spanish provinces but also in regions of neighbouring countries,” Sánchez said. “Forest fires are devastating thousands of hectares and affecting numerous communities.”

 

He promised the government had deployed “all available resources. It will be by your side during the emergency and the recovery.” The prime minister also thanked “all the emergency services that are fighting day and night”.

In an update issued on Friday morning, Spain’s environment ministry said 29 big forest fires had been recorded so far in 2026, compared with an annual average of nine between January and the end of July per year over the past decade. Forest fires had burned about 114,796 hectares, compared with 25,133 by the same time last year.

Spain’s interior ministry has also requested fire-fighting aircraft through the EU’s civil protection mechanism, which aims to strengthen civil protection cooperation between EU countries and 10 additional participating states.

Thousands evacuated in south of France as wildfire rages across pine forest

Video

 Local people and tourists were evacuated from the Arcachon Bay area overnight into Thursday after a huge fire engulfed more than 3,400 hectares (8,400 acres) of forest. Pushed by the wind, with flames reaching 10 metres high, the fire is still spreading towards the Cap Ferret peninsula. On Tuesday, two firefighters died battling another nearby fire close to Bordeaux airport

 

Thousands flee wildfires in France as temperatures reach extreme levels in southern Europe

 Some parts of Mediterranean Sea 5C hotter than normal, with air temperatures above 44C expected in Spain

by  Jon Henley and Ajit Niranjan

Firefighters battle the blaze using a water truck near the village of Le Porge in south-western France. Photograph: Romain Perrocheau/AFP/Getty

 

Brutal heat torching southern Europe has forced nearly 20,000 people to flee wildfires in France as a marine heatwave scalds the Mediterranean and researchers warn that “Dantesque” scenarios cannot be ruled out as infernos worsen.

A “particularly intense” wildfire on France’s southwestern Atlantic coast prompted the evacuation of more than 18,800 people, including thousands of tourists from campsites and holiday homes, as firefighters struggled to control the blaze.

 Extreme highs of 44.7C were recorded on Thursday in Cieza, in the Spanish province of Murcia, according to Aemet, the Spanish meteorological agency. The previous day, the Spanish cities of Albacete, Ávila and Teruel broke their July temperatures records with heat as high as 42C.

 

A marine heatwave is affecting 80% of the Mediterranean Sea’s surface area, according to the Mediterranean Monitoring System. Daily temperatures on Tuesday had reached “extreme” levels in several parts, with some anomalies 5C hotter than the average from 1991 to 2020.

The severity of fires in the EU has broken records for this time of year, data from the European Forest Fire Information System showed on Wednesday, and about twice as much land had burned by 22 July than the average for that date over the last two decades. France has broken records for the area burned; it and Spain have broken records for the number of fires.

People look at the sky illuminated by wildfires in Le Porge, south-west France, on Thursday. Photograph: Romain Perrocheau/AFP/Getty

 

A man rests with his dog in a community hall on a camp bed in Le Porge. Photograph: Romain Perrocheau/AFP/Getty

 

The fire in France began in a dense pine forest near the village of Saumos about 40km (25 miles) west of Bordeaux and just north of the bay of Arcachon, a popular tourist destination. It had burned more than 3,700 hectares (9,140 acres) in a little over 24 hours, firefighters said on Thursday.

No casualties had been reported but several houses had succumbed to the flames, they said. The Gironde prefecture said that while 800 firefighters and four water-bombing planes were battling to bring the fire under control, the situation remained “unfavourable” and the blaze was not yet stabilised.

“The fire is highly erratic and gaining very significant force,” said Marc Vermeulen, the regional fire service chief, on Thursday evening. “One of the main fronts is very close to a semi-urban area. We are defending house by house.”

France has endured three almost back-to-back heatwaves since May as climate breakdown leads to more frequent and extreme weather events causing thousands of excess deaths, evaporating soils and waterways and fuelling wildfires.

Patrick Martineau, 69, who was evacuated from the village of Le Porge, told Agence France-Presse that police had “come banging on the doors … It’s scary – hard to take in. When we bought a home here, we never thought there’d be a fire risk.”

Smoke rising from the wildfire in Saumos is photographed from Arès on Wednesday. Photograph: Romain Perrocheau/AFP/Getty

Sylvie, a holidaymaker from Paris staying in the relatively more built-up area of Lège-Cap-Ferret, said a neighbour had told her: “‘Get your bags ready, we’re going to be evacuated during the night.’ We put the bulk of our stuff in the car boot and left.”

Elke Urbain, from Antwerp in Belgium, who holidays in the area every year, said she was advised while she was on the beach on Wednesday afternoon to “go back immediately to the campsite and gather your things. It’s just terribly sad.”

In 2022, a wildfire burned more than 30,000 hectares in the same area, forcing about 50,000 people to be evacuated. In tinder-dry conditions and fanned by a strong wind, the latest blaze has torn through the forest, with flames reaching 10 metres high.

Jean-Luc Helias, 54, from Le Porge, said he and his family had lived through that fire four years ago and “the firefighters do an amazing job to protect people’s homes. All that matters to me is that my family is safe; the rest is just material possessions.”

Nine municipalities have opened reception centres for evacuees and were sheltering more than 2,500 people, the prefecture said. About 8,800 people were evacuated during the day on Thursday, 10,000 overnight.

 Numerous roads in the area, including those leading to the Cap Ferret peninsula a few kilometres to the south – home to the villas of celebrities and millionaires and one of France’s most exclusive holiday spots – were closed to all but essential traffic.

A house in Cotignac, another village close to Pontevès, is consumed by fire on Wednesday night. Photograph: Thibaud Moritz/AFP/Getty

 

A helicopter drops water over a burning area as a wildfire flares up again in Pontevès in south-eastern France on Wednesday. Photograph: Thibaud Moritz/AFP/Getty

 

Police have opened an investigation into the causes of the wildfire, which the mayor of Le Porge, Martial Zaninetti, said on Wednesday appeared to have been started by a machine that was clearing undergrowth.

A fortnight ago, flames devastated a 10th of the Unesco-listed Fontainebleau forest outside Paris in a rare wildfire so far north. France’s interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, has said more than 12,500 wildfires had broken out since the beginning of the year.

In Spain, authorities on Thursday ordered 3,500 people in a town west of Madrid to leave their homes because of a forest fire burning out of control.

The emergency services said on X evacuation messages had been sent to people in Aldea de Fresno, about 60 kilometres (38 miles) south-west of Madrid.

A fire that has burned 32,000 hectares in the province of Guadalajara, north of the capital, was described as stable.

Spanish wildfire scientists said they were not surprised by the extreme figures as the abandonment of rural land had left more overgrown vegetation and the rise in temperatures from climate breakdown made it easier for such plant matter to dry out and burn.

 

Víctor Resco de Dios, a professor of forestry engineering and global change at the University of Lleida, said: “Although it’s difficult to predict how far things might go, we will soon be unable to rule out Dantesque scenarios like those seen in California or Australia, with fires or fire complexes reaching hundreds of thousands of hectares or even a million hectares.”

The marine heatwave in the Mediterranean is projected to shrink but stay strong from Sardinia to Greece, according to a forecast for Saturday from Mercator Ocean. From Gibraltar to the Balearic Islands, strong heat is expected to drop to moderate levels, despite intensifying locally in the Alboran Sea.

Western Europe has been rocked by repeated heatwaves this summer, with extreme highs in June that scientists expect will have killed tens of thousands of people as hot days push bodies into overdrive and warm nights prevent them from resting.

On Wednesday, an analysis estimated the cost of the June heatwave to the continent’s grain farmers at €2bn (£1.7bn) in lost revenue from 9m tonnes of destroyed crops. On Thursday, scientists found climate breakdown had contributed to drought conditions, making levels of soil dryness five times more likely in western Europe and 11 times more likely in eastern Europe.

Japan records its first ‘cruelly hot day’ as cities swelter in 40-degree heat

Japan’s meteorological agency coined the term kokushobi – or “cruelly hot day” to warn the public of dangers tied to extreme heat. Photograph: Nicolas Datiche/SIPA/Shutterstock

by  Gavin Blair in Tokyo

 In April Japan coined new term kokushobi for days above 40C as country advises workers to wear shorts to the office to cope with stifling heat

 

Japan logged its first official kokushobi or “cruelly hot day” on Tuesday since the new term for when temperatures top 40 degrees Celsius was introduced in April. The Japan Meteorological Agency coined the new designation to warn the public of the heat dangers of days that were once freak weather events but have now become more common.

The central Japan cities of Gujo and Tajimi in Gifu prefecture, along with Toyota in Aichi prefecture, all hit 40C. Gujo’s 40C and Toyota’s 40.1C were all-time highs recorded at their respective weather stations.

 

Across 914 weather stations nationwide, 278 registered temperatures exceeding 35C or moshobi – “extremely hot days,” the highest level of warning until the recent introduction of the new terminology. Days over 25C are called natsubi or “summer days”, while those exceeding 30C are known as manatsubi – “true summer days.”

On Monday, a man in his 40s was found dead on a street in Sanjo, Niigata prefecture, while another in his 70s died in Kanagawa, southwest of Tokyo. Both are believed to have succumbed to the heat.

Heatstroke deaths topped 2,000 for the first time in 2024, while more than 100,000 people were taken to hospital last year between the beginning of May and late September, according to the fire and disaster management agency.

 

The rising heat is affecting many aspects of Japanese life – including yields and the quality of rice, a staple. In response, farmers are planting more heat-tolerant varieties, while some are switching to crops such as avocado that have not traditionally been grown at scale in Japan.

Impacts are also being seen in sport, with the most high-profile being the restructuring of the hugely popular koshien national high school baseball tournament. Played in the sweltering heat of August, the games have been split into morning and evening sessions since 2024 to reduce the chances of heatstroke for both players and spectators.

 

Meanwhile, office workers are being encouraged to wear shorts on hot summer days, the latest relaxing of Japan’s buttoned-down corporate culture as part of “Cool Biz” measures to reduce electricity consumption through lower use of airconditioning. Previous initiatives have encouraged “salarymen” to shed jackets and ties, and wear short-sleeved shirts but this year’s expected scorching summer has prompted calls for another level of casualness.

Tokyo governor Yuriko Koike announced the new clothing recommendations for office wear which also include polo shirts, T-shirts and trainers where appropriate, against the backdrop of expected high temperatures and a “challenging outlook for electricity supply”.

A study by the National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES) and Tokyo’s Waseda University in 2025 found that without drastic cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, school sports will become unplayable outdoors by the 2060s.

Average summer temperatures in Japan have risen about 1.3C over the past 100 years, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA). Both 2023 and 2024 were the hottest years since records began in 1898, but last year saw those levels surpassed again. The summer of 2025 was 2.4C above the average of the previous three decades, with 132 weather stations logging their highest ever average heat and a new all-time Japanese high of 41.8C at Isesaki, Gunma, north of Tokyo, on 5 August.

Millions face long-term coastal flooding risk in UK without climate action, scientists warn. A ‘reasonable worst-case scenario’ suggests need for large-scale movement of populations away from reshaped coast

Coastal erosion in Withernsea, East Yorkshire. Lincolnshire and the Humber estuary are the areas most in danger. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

by  Damian Carrington Environment editor

 

Up to 13 million people in the UK face the long-term risk of coastal flooding due to the climate crisis, scientists have warned, with a “reasonable worst-case scenario” suggesting the need for the large-scale movement of populations away from a dramatically reshaped coast.

Even if today’s global pledges to cut carbon pollution are met, about 1.4 million more people will be exposed to coastal floods in 2200 and 1.7 million in 2300 due to the sea level rise driven by melting ice caps and warming oceans.

While this is far in the future, action today to cut emissions and plan future settlements and flood defences could prevent such leaps in flood risk becoming inevitable, the experts said. Keeping within the Paris agreement targets would cut the number of people exposed in 2300 by 1 million, they said.

 Sea level has risen by about 20cm around the UK in the last century and is accelerating. A further 40cm to 60cm by 2100 is already baked in, meaning about half a million more people will be at risk of their homes being flooded, on top of the 2.5 million already in danger near the coasts. Lincolnshire and the Humber estuary are most in danger.

 

However, scientists are concerned that the gradual rise in sea levels seen so far could change rapidly if ice sheets start a runaway collapse into the oceans, instead of just melting slowly in place. In this scenario, the UK could suffer 15 metres of sea level rise by 2300, swamping large parts of London and many other places, the researchers found.

“[Planners] who only consider changes over the coming century may have a false impression of the true risk landscape given the potential for post-2100 acceleration of sea level rise,” the researchers concluded in their study published in the journal Nature Communications. “It is inevitable that a combination of additional or enhanced flood defences and managed retreat will be necessary to mitigate against post-2100 flood risk.”

 

Prof Matt Palmer at the University of Bristol, who led the research, said: “The oceans and ice-covered parts of the world respond very slowly to global warming, which makes sea level rise the ‘sleeping giant’ of climate change. The result is that sea-level rise is locked-in for centuries to come.”

Dr Rob Larter, at the British Antarctic Survey and not involved in the study, said it was a sobering analysis: “It shows how the UK is likely to have to adapt to several metres of sea level rise over coming centuries. The higher impact [scenarios] presented in this study need to be considered as genuine possibilities rather than unlikely scare stories.”

The research is the first to quantify the number of UK people at threat from coastal flooding under long-term sea level rise. It combined sea level rise projections for the UK with a detailed flood model developed by the Bristol company Fathom. Sea level rise is greater in England and Wales than in Scotland and Northern Ireland as the latter countries were pushed down during the last ice age and are still slowly rebounding.

 

The study did not factor in greater surges from storms supercharged by global heating or future changes in population. It also did not consider future changes to flood defences, which are highly uncertain, but instead set out the level of likely threat in different scenarios.

Dr Joanne Williams, at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, said: “It is useful to consider [worst-case scenarios], because it shows how expensive and challenging it will be if we do not act on climate, with very large areas at new risk. Upgrading existing flood defence lines to the levels required by these high-end scenarios would be extremely challenging.”

Coastal flooding is just one type of flood risk in the UK. River and flash flooding already affect more people and are worsening as the warming climate leads to more intense rainfall

Poultry sector growth plan risks UK national security, campaigners warn. Government’s food security push is said to rely on animal feed imports with vulnerability to supply chain shocks

 

The environment secretary has said one of the biggest barriers to expanding the poultry sector was planning constraints. Photograph: Farlap/Alamy

by  Pippa Neill

 

The government’s planned poultry sector growth plan is a risk to national security, campaigners have warned.

Earlier this month, the environment secretary, Emma Reynolds, told the Groundswell agriculture festival that the key to improving food security was consuming more homegrown produce, and said this was why the government had set up the Farming and Food Partnership Board, whose members include industry leaders such as the president of the National Farmers’ Union and the chief executive of the Food & Drink Federation.

Reynolds said: “I would like to see us use different levers of the state and use the board to really boost the level of food production in the UK.”

In a parliamentary committee hearing earlier this month, the environment secretary said one of the biggest barriers to growth in the poultry sector was planning constraints. The Guardian has previously revealed that ministers were rewriting planning rules to make it easier to build intensive livestock farms despite concerns about water pollution, air quality and local opposition.

Emma Reynolds, the secretary of state for the environment, food and rural affairs, said she would like to ‘really boost the level of food production in the UK’. Photograph: Jill Mead/The Guardian

But this focus on growth in the poultry sector to tackle food security has met with strong criticism. Ruth Westcott, a campaign manager at Sustain, the alliance for better food and farming, said the plan to produce more UK poultry was a risk to UK food security, not a solution.

“Intensive poultry farming is highly resource-intensive, polluting and inefficient, so it can never be a solution to food security,” Westcott said.

Sustain and the campaign group Communities Against Factory Farming (CAFF) are calling on the government to axe its poultry growth plan and focus on homegrown sources of protein such as pulses, legumes, nuts and beans.

“The government’s own national security assessment warns that ‘animal farming at current levels is unsustainable without imports – soy from South America makes up 18% of produced animal feed’,” said Maya Pardo, the campaign lead at CAFF. “Besides destroying the Amazon rainforest to feed factory-farmed chickens, heavy reliance on imports of animal feed also leaves us vulnerable to supply chain shocks and ecosystem collapse, which is a national security issue.”

Concerns about the UK’s food security have been expressed across the board. Last month the government’s farming roadmap set out its long-term vision for the farming sector over the next 25 years, including a vital focus on food security, warning geopolitical instability, the climate crisis, environmental degradation and supply chain disruptions were already affecting the UK’s food security. It warned this could increase the risk of “severe food price shocks” and in some “extreme situations, lead to reduced availability of certain foods”.

The language echoes a recent report by the UK’s top national security officials, which warned that national security was under severe threat from the climate crisis and the looming collapse of vital natural ecosystems, with food shortages and economic potentially just years away.

Just this month, the Italian coffee company Lavazza warned that coffee prices would remain high for years to come due to geopolitical tensions and the climate crisis driving up costs.

Borlotti beans growing at the Riverford farm in south Devon. Campaigners call for a focus on homegrown proteins from beans, pulses, legumes and nuts. Photograph: Jim Wileman/The Guardian

Harriet Bell, the regenerative farming lead at Riverford, said the organic veg box company welcomed planning reform that helped farmers invest in reservoirs, renewable energy and polytunnels, but planning reform “must not become a free pass for developments that undermine healthy water systems, biodiversity or animal welfare”.

The government’s farming roadmap set out that nature-friendly farming systems can sustain or enhance food production while strengthening resilience and reducing fertiliser dependency. Bell said if ministers were serious about food security, the forthcoming organic action plan for England should play an “important role in turning that ambition into reality”.

“In the long-term, food production depends on healthy soils, healthy water systems and biodiversity every bit as much as it depends on increasing production,” she said.

Tim Benton, a professor of population ecology at the University of Leeds, said food security would soon become the “organising principle” for agricultural policy.

He said in a volatile world that was only getting more volatile, the government needed to move away from having a risk register that focused on pinpointing particular events and instead recognise: “We’re in a new world where events are happening all of the time and will continue all of the time.”

‘It’s only going to get worse’: wildfires forcing firefighters to make impossible choices

 

Fontainebleau Forest video - France

 

by  Ajit Niranjan and Caroline Davies

 As the climate crisis fuels more intense blazes, pushing them to new parts of the world, those tackling them are forced to ration resources and decide which to fight

 

César Alcaraz had only just become a firefighter in the late 1990s when he found himself ambushed by a fast-moving blaze. Barely able to breathe and with no more water left in his truck, he and his colleagues fled an inferno ravaging Spain’s Montgó mountain region, wishing their bosses had sent more support.

But nearly three decades on, as an officer with Alicante’s provincial firefighters, Alcaraz has more sympathy for the agonising choices that commanders have to make. When wildfires overwhelm an area, his job resembles that of a doctor in an emergency room with too few ventilators.

It is a dilemma growing more onerous as wildfires worsen across the Mediterranean – and is beginning to confront countries as cold as the UK, where wildfires are invading cities, homes and gardens.

Flames and smoke rise from a wildfire near the municipality of El Pocico in Almería, Spain, earlier in July. Photograph: Pablo Blázquez Domínguez/Getty Images

“It’s not just about having more fires to fight, it’s the risk of operational collapse,” said Alcaraz, who sits in the command centre and sees concurrent blazes occurring more often and earlier in the year. “When two or three fires break out simultaneously, we are forced to make immediate triage decisions.”

Deadly wildfires have engulfed western Europe this month – the grim consequence of a trio of heatwaves that have turned lush vegetation into dry tinder – while separate blazes suffocate North America with cloying smoke. France, Portugal and Spain have each been torched by a record-breaking number of wildfires for this time of year, leaving an unprecedented area of France in flames and 13 people dead in Spain. The UK began the week with 19 separate wildfires that led experts to warn of a “firewave” more widespread than ever before. 

Fires in northern Ontario in Canada caused poor air quality in Toronto, which had the worst air quality of any major city in the world on Wednesday. Photograph: Cole Burston/AFP/Getty Images

 

Across the Atlantic, smoke from 100 fires burning northern Ontario made Toronto the most polluted city in the world on Wednesday before it crossed the US border to choke New York. Far-reaching fumes from Canadian wildfires are so strong they caused 82,000 early deaths in 2023, a study found last year, including 33,000 in the US and 22,000 in Europe. On Friday, the EU’s Copernicus agency said summer smoke was causing “extremely poor” air quality warnings in areas such as New Jersey, which hosts the World Cup final on Sunday.

The problem is not just the hectarage. Perhaps surprisingly, the global trend in wildfire size has been toward fewer hectares of burnt land, largely because huge tracts of African savannah that were susceptible to fires are now fragmented by farmland. But where fires burn, they are often hotter, less predictable, and greater in number. Carbon pollution has raised global temperatures, and with more heat to dry out plants, small fires can more easily escalate into hellish infernos. This allows wildfires to spread into areas – in forests and moorlands, but also in cities, parks and gardens – that were not as vulnerable before, increasing the danger at what researchers call the wildland-urban interface.

In France, such extreme scenarios are forcing authorities to divide scarce resources. Firefighters in France tackled 250-300 fires simultaneously over the past three weeks, said Julien Marion, the head of the civil protection agency, during a visit to the smouldering Fontainebleau forest on Thursday.

People watch as a firefighting plane tackles a wildfire next to the A9 motorway near Béziers, in south-west France. Photograph: Abdul Saboor/Reuters

In Spain, firefighters used to dealing with a couple of blazes at a time say they struggle with an increase in number and strength. The situation has been worsened by recent wet winters and springs that allow vegetation to flourish – leaving more surplus fuel when it inevitably dries in summer – as well as the abandonment of farmland that once broke up flammable countryside. On Thursday, authorities said they expected a large fire in rural Aragón, one of dozens still burning across the country, to take days to control.

“In the end, the response capacity is limited,” said Juan Caamaño, the head of training at the Pau Costa Foundation, a nonprofit that is helping Northern Ireland and other cold regions in northern Europe prepare for worsening wildfires. “When we face these huge fires, these extreme events, it’s like trying to put firefighters on a beach to stop a tsunami.”

In the UK, where the threat of fires is more present in grass than in forests, blazes have broken out from cities to national parks this month after a scorchingly hot start to summer. A wildfire that ripped through Walthamstow in east London last weekend, which is thought to have been caused by a falling tree that hit power cables above a railway line, drew about 125 firefighters to put out a blaze. Strong wind and dry vegetation helped it spread fast.

A wildfire at the Cairngorms national park near Nethy Bridge, which firefighters worked through the night to contain as people were evacuated this week. Photograph: RSPB Scotland/PA

“One of the alarming things I was seeing over the weekend was large parts of the country where the probability of sustained ignition was 100%,” said Dr Thomas Smith, a wildfire scientist at the London School of Economics. “Especially for grass fuels, which dry out very quickly, it only requires 2-3 weeks of dry weather to reach those thresholds.”

“The climate of the 20th century is now gone,” UK scientists said on Wednesday in a report that found last year was the country’s hottest on record. Average temperatures virtually unknown in the 1980s now cover almost a fifth of the land, the scientists said, as fire services fought to put out blazes from Durham in the north to Devon in the south-west. The next day, a wildfire burned 300 hectares (740 acres) in Scotland’s Cairngorms national park.

“Simultaneous wildfires place enormous pressure on emergency services,” said Dr Maria Barbosa, a wildfire scientist at the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. “Fire agencies depend on their ability to move personnel, equipment and aircraft between regions as conditions change. But when multiple large fires occur at the same time, that flexibility is greatly reduced.”

The shift from fighting all fires to picking battles is “a very new thing for northern European countries”, said Smith, though not for the Mediterranean. “They’re having to change tactics when they fight fires, while we’re really struggling with strategic decisions.”

Homes in Wennington, Greater London, were gutted by fire during the UK’s extreme heatwave in July 2022. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Fresh in the memories of London’s firefighters is the wildfire that destroyed 18 houses in Wennington village during a ferocious heatwave in July 2022, in the worst day for the London fire brigade since German bombs set fire to the city in the second world war. To be more flexible, the service has since bought four all-terrain support vehicles that are agile enough to reach places that fire engines cannot. Able to “pump and drive”, the firefighting 4x4s have been mobilised 34 times this year, including for regular fires.

The London fire brigade has also encouraged local authorities and private land owners to introduce natural fire breaks by cutting down grass near homes and businesses, ploughing land to remove flammable materials, and clearing dead leaves from gutters – the types of strategy Australians know well – to stop fires from spreading.

Such advice has grown more pertinent as the number of firefighters has fallen. Steve Wright, the general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, said crews had been stretched by staffing cuts – with 12,000 fewer firefighters in the UK today than in 2010 – that delayed them from getting to incidents, resulting in more fires that grow out of control. “This is only going to get worse, and the government has to get a handle on it,” he said. “This is not moorland, not heathland. It’s happening in towns, cities and villages across the UK.”

A burning forest on a hillside near Longwood in Victoria, Australia, as bushfires spread in January 2026. Photograph: Michael Currie/Reuters

The strains that local services feel are being echoed at a global level, too. Fire seasons in North America and Australia are getting longer and increasingly coincide, hampering longstanding arrangements to share aircraft and firefighters between the US, Canada and Australia. The overlap between the two regions is expected to increase to between four and 29 days each year by 2050, a study found last year.

While climate breakdown is the main driver of increasingly “synchronous” global fire seasons, according to research published in February, natural variation often makes it worse. The return of El Niño, the cyclical weather pattern that supercharges weather extremes, has alarmed Australia and Indonesia because of the greater risk of fires that it brings. Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology said this week that the emerging El Niño could be the strongest on record, and may be joined by a positive Indian Ocean dipole, a related weather pattern that, with El Niño, has led to some of Australia’s hottest and driest years. Swathes of south-east Asia and Oceania may soon be in flames.

Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, addresses the media after a wildfire killed at least 13 people in Almería province. Photograph: Jorge Guerrero/AFP/Getty Images

Are governments taking the threat seriously? “The climate emergency kills,” said Pedro Sánchez, the prime minister of Spain, during a visit on Monday to the advanced command post in Almería from which firefighters last week quelled one of the country’s deadliest blazes on record. “As a result, all levels of government and society as a whole must rise to the challenge before us.”

And yet policies to cut carbon pollution in rich countries fall far short of what would be needed to stop the planet from heating 1.5C (2.7F) above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century. Meanwhile, efforts to use fire to manage the land – for instance with controlled burns that prevent the overgrowth that fuels mega-fires – are still considered novel in the same countries. The exceptions are Canada and Australia, which have made efforts to incorporate Indigenous fire strategies instead of relying on suppression.

In Europe, the cultural shift among firefighters has begun to trickle up into policy. In late June, EU member states approved a non-binding strategy to manage wildfire risk that encourages prescribed burning, manual brush clearing and more diverse landscapes. Its civil protection mechanism, which allows embattled member states to request firefighting support from neighbours, was increased this year by pre-emptive deployments of firefighters from other regions. In 2025, record-breaking wildfires that charred 1m hectares led to more requests for help than ever before.

A fireguard aircraft from France’s civil security drops fire-retardant substance over a wildfire in Pouzols-Minervois, south-west France, in early July. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

But, while the mechanism itself was “working perfectly”, firefighting teams were being deployed in extreme situations the likes of which they had never seen, said Caamaño. He was speaking from Indonesia, where he was preparing firefighting teams for the “wild burn” that south-east Asia would soon face.

“I have the feeling that we’re always behind the emergency,” he said. “And it is the emergency that governs us, rather than us governing the emergency.”

Firefighting planes scrambled from south of France to tackle huge wildfire near Paris. Officials say blaze in Fontainebleau forest is of ‘exceptional scale’, with 900 homes evacuated and road and rail links hit

 

The wildfire in France’s Fontainebleau forest, about 40 miles south-east of Paris. Photograph: Franck Desprez/SDIS 77/AFP/Getty Images

by  Angelique Chrisafis in Paris and Sam Jones in Madrid

 

French firefighters are tackling a blaze of unprecedented scale sweeping through Fontainebleau forest south-east of Paris, while in southern Spain the prime minister visited the scene of a deadly wildfire and warned: “The climate emergency kills.”

The fire in Fontainebleau, a one-time royal hunting preserve about 40 miles (60km) from the French capital that today is dotted with villages, began late on Sunday afternoon. The blaze, which is unusual in its proximity to Paris, raced across about 800 hectares (2,000 acres) of forest.

By Monday afternoon it had not been contained and “continued to progress moderately”, said Pierre Ory, the prefect of the Seine-et-Marne department. The Paris region remains under the highest heatwave alert.

The mayor of Fontainebleau, Julien Gondard, said he was shocked and angered. “This exceptional area is consumed by flames, we’ve never seen anything like this,” he told the local TV station ICI Paris Île-de-France. “The forest is fragile and it’s in a critical condition.”

 Fire officials said it could take several days to several weeks to fully contain the fire. They described it as “very virulent” and of “exceptional scale”.

 

The interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, visiting an operations room in Fontainebleau on Monday, said: “The aim is to contain the fire.”

Nuñez said about 900 homes had been evacuated, no homes had yet been burned and no one was injured. He said an investigation was under way to determine the cause of the fire.

“The fire began at several points at the end of yesterday afternoon – around 10 points, which would suggest it could have been voluntary in origin. I won’t say more because an investigation is ongoing,” he said.

fficials said it could take several weeks to fully contain the fire. Photograph: SDIS 77/Frank Desprez/EPA

Nuñez said forest fires had burned 32,000 hectares of land in France so far this year, “already more than the 2025 season and it’s only 13 July”.

He added that, since the start of the summer, 44 people had been arrested across the country on suspicion of being responsible for the outbreak of fires.

High-speed rail was affected after the fire broke out on Sunday because key lines pass near the forest. The French rail company SNCF said there were delays of up to eight hours for trains arriving at or leaving from Gare de Lyon in Paris. On Monday morning, rail services were returning to normal.

Half of the 700 residents of the village of Le Vaudoué were evacuated and firefighters were operating in several other towns in the area, the local Seine-et-Marne fire service said.

Firefighting planes near Fontainebleau, France, on Monday. Photograph: Benoît Tessier/Reuters

Without the use of firefighting planes, other villages would already have been evacuated, said Olivier Compta, who was overseeing the firefighting operation.

About 400 firefighters have been working to contain the fire, which ignited two days before the 14 July Bastille Day national holiday.

Eric Brocardi, a spokesperson for France’s national federation of firefighters, said it was the first time firefighting planes had been sent up from the normally drier and hotter south of the country to extinguish fires in the Paris region. Two firefighting helicopters and an observation aircraft were also helping to tackle the blaze, he said. “The aim is to save lives and property.”

Earlier, firefighters dealt with a fire that had blocked a highway running east from Paris and disrupted a high-speed train line to the south of France.

 

The Paris region, along with large parts of the rest of France, has had a succession of heatwaves since May. Temperature records have also been broken in several other countries across Europe and the heatwaves have caused thousands of excess deaths, according to estimates in Spain, France, Belgium and Britain.

In Spain, where 13 people are known to have been killed by last week’s deadly wildfire in the south-eastern region of Almería, and where 10 people are still unaccounted for, the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, renewed his calls for joint national action to address the effects of the climate emergency.

“A third of all the land that burned in Europe last year was here in Spain,” he said during a visit to the affected area on Monday morning. “That’s not just down to the fires that have traditionally happened; it’s also due to a worsening because of climate change that’s happening across the Iberian peninsula and especially in Spain.”

Europeans voice concerns amid sweltering heatwave - video

 

Sánchez repeated his calls for a “state pact” to tackle the changing climate. “It’s not just about reacting when these fires hit; it’s also about preventing them, building perimeters, and about teaching people how to react when a fire – or any of the civil emergencies that are unfortunately becoming more common – hits.”

He added: “I’ve said it many times before, but the climate emergency kills. We’re seeing that across Europe and we’re seeing that in Spain.”

Spanish authorities said on Monday that five British nationals were among 13 bodies recovered from the fire zone. Three Belgians, one French national and one Spanish citizen have also been identified – all adults. Among the dead were a married couple, the husband Spanish and the wife British, and a British couple.

The June heatwaves that hit Europe would have been “virtually impossible” without climate change, the World Weather Attribution group of scientists has said.

Human-caused climate breakdown is supercharging extreme weather across the world, driving more frequent and more deadly disasters such as heatwaves and wildfires.