Wildfire now nine miles from French city of Bordeaux, mayor warns

 

Firefighters in Gironde are facing an "unprecedented" situation as they battle a blaze that "has a life of its own", the interior minister has warned

by  Jaroslav Lukiv

 

The mayor of Bordeaux has said he is bracing for "all eventualities", as one of multiple wildfires burning in France is now 15km (nine miles) from the south-western city.

"We are preparing to accommodate a large number of people should further evacuations be ordered," said Thomas Cazenave.

President Emmanuel Macron, visiting the fire-ravaged area in the Gironde region, said the country was facing a "completely unprecedented wildfire" - the "toughest since World War Two".

Some 220,000 people have been evacuated in France and more than 100,000 in Spain, where fires are burning "uncontrolled" west of Madrid.

Another intense heatwave on Tuesday could further hamper firefighting efforts.

Macron said a smaller fire in the Landes region had been contained, but the fight continued in neighbouring Gironde.

While firefighters had made progress on Monday, improving the situation compared to 24 hours before, he warned that "temperatures are set to rise again, the wind is still present, and therefore we must remain humble".

Earlier, Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez had said the fire "has a life of its own".

 

Jerome Steffe, the mayor of Cestas, a town south of Bordeaux, told the BBC this "will be the fire of the century".

He described how 17,000 residents were evacuated from his town during the night when the fire swelled two days ago. So far, he said, the region has seen 42,000 hectares (103,000 acres) of land burned and 240 houses destroyed.

"In my city the situation is really catastrophic," he added.

And although the fire is no longer moving as quickly, he said his teams have "won only a small battle" and emphasised that the risk remains from flying embers or a sudden change in wind direction.

"We put all our energy into creating protective firebreaks," he explained, but admitted "we are all scared in front of this situation."

French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu warned the country "is going through an unprecedented fire season", with 116,085 hectares (286,852 acres) burned and 13,566 fire starts recorded since January.

The minister revealed in a post on X that nine out of 10 fires "are human-caused and most arise from carelessness: a cigarette butt, a barbecue, work carried out without precaution".

But he also said that not all these fires are accidents and some are deliberately set, adding that since 6 July, 162 arrests have taken place.

 Wildfires are also burning in several other French regions, including Var and Landes, and also in Haute-Corse on the island of Corsica.

Meanwhile, neighbouring Spain on Monday entered its fifth day of a national emergency because of raging wildfires west of the capital Madrid.

BBC Verify has been analysing satellite imagery showing the spread of the wildfire west of Madrid, which has now affected more than 27,000 hectares.

Satellite images, captured on 24 and 26 July, show how the fire spread over two days after several blazes in the Almorox, Villa del Prado and San Martín de Valdeiglesias areas merged into one large fire.

The images show the rapid expansion of the burn scar as the wildfire spread.

Local officials have warned that the region faces the "worst fires in its history".

Climate change is driving up temperatures around the world, and Europe is the fastest warming continent, heating up twice as fast as the global average, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service.

 This is causing increased summer heatwaves, greater pressure on Europe's water supply, and more intense wildfires.

France and Spain race to contain huge wildfires before fresh heatwave begins

Race against time to contain wildfires in France and Spain - The Latest

by  Angelique Chrisafis in Bordeaux, Angela Giuffrida in Rome and Jennifer Rankin in Brussels

 

 Coming days are ‘absolutely critical’ for firefighters before temperatures rise again this week, officials say 

Firefighters in France and Spain are racing to bring huge wildfires under control before another heatwave this week that will complicate efforts to tame the flames.

Spain’s interior minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, said Monday and Tuesday were “absolutely crucial days” before temperatures rise again from Wednesday, prompting prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, to warn: “We face difficult hours, complex hours” ahead.

EU officials have said wildfires could still be burning until early November in what threatens to be a record-breaking year for the area of land burned.

A wildfire burns near Cestas in Gironde province in south-west France. Photograph: Julien Soulard/EPA

 

A fire in the hilly terrain of Ávila, west of Madrid, has become Spain’s largest on record, burning 50,000 hectares (125,000 acres). Authorities are battling two separate fires north-west of Madrid, taking the total area of scorched land near the capital to 70,000 hectares.

Spain’s state meteorological agency, Aemet, said the heatwave would last until “at least” Sunday, “making firefighting efforts more difficult due to high temperatures [and] locally gusty southerly winds.”

France was also in “a race against time” to control wildfires before another heatwave this week, said Eric Brocardi, a fire service spokesperson. Weather forecasters have said temperatures could reach 40C (104F) is some parts of the country from Tuesday.

Charred cars in the Spanish village of Chapinería on Monday. Photograph: Violeta Santos Moura/Reuters

This would complicate efforts to control the wildfire in Gironde in south-west France, which the interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, described as “extremely intense and unpredictable … generating its own winds and advancing erratically toward the Bordeaux metropolitan area”.

The mayor of Bordeaux, Thomas Cazenave, told the BBC he is bracing for “all eventualities”, as the fire advanced to within 15km (nine miles) from the city. “We are preparing to accommodate a large number of people should further evacuations be ordered,” he said.

On a visit to Bordeaux, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, said: “The coming weeks will be tough and we have to hold out.”

But he said a smaller fire in the adjoining Landes – which forced the evacuation of more than 30,000 people – was “contained” but remained “virulent”. “We must be extremely cautious over the next few hours and the coming days,” he said.

The Gironde fire has so far burned 42,000 hectares, making it one of the biggest devastations of land in France since the second world war.

In the Cestas commune, about 10 miles from the city of Bordeaux, firefighters used mechanical diggers to uproot trees in an attempt to create a firebreak.

The vast fire, which has triggered the evacuation of 220,000 people, had not progressed during the early hours of Monday but was “not contained” and remained “very complicated to control”, Nuñez said.

Speaking after an emergency meeting of the French government on Monday, he described this year’s wildfires as “completely exceptional”. More than 116,000 hectares of forest and vegetation have been burned since January, far exceeding the 70,000 hectares reported for the whole of 2025.

Spain’s government said the 172,000 hectares of forested land burned this year was six times greater than the equivalent figure for 2025.

Sánchez, told a climate conference the wildfires were not isolated incidents.

“It is the most painful manifestation of a climate emergency that is making … wildfires more voracious and heatwaves more frequent, and as a result our land more vulnerable,” he said. “It is no longer an exception. It is the rule.”

The European Commission’s lead official on the green transition, Teresa Ribera, said Europe was not prepared for the consequences of the climate crisis. In an interview with El País she said the commission would propose an adaptation strategy in October that would be much more comprehensive than policies implemented so far.

Pedro Sánchez visits a firefighters’ control centre in La Vall d’Uixo. Photograph: Manuel Bruque/EPA

A series of heatwaves, including record-breaking temperatures in June, that scientists say would have been impossible without the climate crisis, has left parched soils and tinder-dry vegetation that have fuelled this summer’s fires.

A European Commission official said the wildfire season had begun in April and could last until early November. Officials also stressed the rising risks for fighting wildfires from the middle of the week in France, Spain and Greece.

The EU executive has coordinated the dispatch of seven planes and four helicopters to France, as well as six planes and three forest firefighting teams to Spain, after the countries triggered the bloc’s emergency assistance mechanism. EU officials have also been sent to the Bordeaux region to assist local authorities.

A fire engine drives through smoke near Marcheprime outside Bordeaux. Photograph: Emma Da Silva/AP

Officials stressed the unprecedented nature of recent fires, which have spread rapidly over large areas. A commission official said that a recent fire in southern Spain that killed 13 people had reached speeds of 4 mph, while firefighters are able to react only to fires moving 300 metres an hour or less.

The scale of Europe’s wildfires has raised questions about the continent’s ability to respond. Italy is among about 10 European countries that have sent firefighting equipment or teams to France and Spain while grappling with its own blazes.

Several fires broke out in northern and central Portugal, officials said, with over 1,000 firefighters and other professionals battling the flames.

Firefighters fought to extinguish a major wildfire in Italy’s southern region of Puglia on Monday. More than 400 people, many of them tourists staying in campsites set among pine forests, were evacuated by sea from the Gargano peninsula on Sunday as the blaze, fanned by strong winds, encroached on beaches.

A further 58 people were evacuated from their homes in Maratea as a wildfire swept through neighbouring Basilicata.

Italy is bracing for its fourth heatwave this year as temperatures edge up towards highs of 38C to 40C from Wednesday.

Smoke from the fires in France is continuing to cause a “marked deterioration” in air quality across a swathe of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region and beyond, with health authorities warning about the danger.

Elderly people, pregnant women and those with respiratory issues and chronic conditions were advised to take precautions. Local health authorities said people should close windows, wear an FFP2 mask outside and avoid strenuous activity.

The prime minister’s office said more than 1.5 million FFP2 masks had been sent to the region.

Nearly 300,000 flee wildfires in France and Spain (edited)

 

Firefighters battle flames in Lège-Cap-Ferret, south-western France

by Dearbail Jordanand and Sofia Ferreira Santos

 

 

Firefighters are struggling to contain wildfires in south-west France as strong winds push flames towards the city of Bordeaux, with one official saying they "are far from having the fire under control."

More than 250,000 people in France and Spain have fled fires which have been raging for days, as winds and high temperatures hamper efforts to contain them. Overnight, seven towns west of Bordeaux were told to evacuate residents.

In Spain, where a state of emergency has been declared, a change in weather conditions has helped firefighters outside Madrid.

Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez admitted there are "complex times ahead". Meanwhile, authorities in València confirmed the death of a man in a fire.

The man, believed to be in his 70s, was found dead in his car by firefighters as they extinguished a fire in the Salt de l'Aigua ravine in Manises, according to local media reports.

In France, around 200,000 people have been evacuated in south-western regions of Gironde and Landes regions.

France has mobilised its military to help with the response and extra reinforcements from the army have been sent to help firefighters by clearing brush and creating fire breaks

 

As of Saturday morning, the wildfire was around 40km to 50km (25 to 30 miles) away from Bordeaux. Still, the wind was blowing smoke towards the city and people reported an acrid smell in the air.

One tourist who fled an approaching wildfire near Bordeaux with his family described the scale of the blaze as "frightening".

Spencer Randall told the BBC his family evacuated in the early hours of Saturday to an area 100 miles east, but they can "still smell the wildfires from here".

"It's quite strong winds fanning the flames, just terrifying," he said.

Shelters have been set up across the region to house evacuees

A British couple holidaying in Bordeaux said they noticed the flames get worse on Friday night, as the fire approached.

"At about seven o'clock you could smell smoke. We thought someone was having a barbecue," Maisie told BBC Newsbeat from their holiday rental.

Her partner, Caleb, said the ash has now covered the pool in the house and turned their feet black when walking outside.

 

The smoke "really hits your lungs right away", they added.

Nearby, in Saint-Aubin-de-Médoc, residents evacuating said the situation was "stressful", with one local describing it a "disaster".

The final leg of the Tour de France, due to take place Sunday, has been shortened from 133km (83 miles) to 89km (55 miles) so that security forces can be redeployed to areas affected by wildfires, organisers and police have said.

French President Emmanuel Macron is set to have an emergency meeting with ministers as 30 or so fires rage across the country - a situation which the government said is totally unprecedented.

 

In Spain, fires continued near Madrid but the regional government said there had been some progress.

"The change in weather conditions - less wind, higher humidity and lower temperature - has greatly benefited the fight against the forest fires, which have advanced little and decreased in intensity," it wrote on X.

Speaking from Cenicientos, south-west of Madrid, Prime Minister Sánchez said: "Right now, we have a window of opportunity in order to tackle against the wildfires, protect and save lives and effectively try and control the fire."

 "It's true that temperatures have dropped a little bit. But still the wind is making it difficult and there may be thunderstorms as well."

Since the wildfires broke out in Spain, nearly 60,000 people have been evacuated from the Madrid and Ávila regions, while more than 28,000 remain confined to their homes, according to Spain's Interior Ministry.

Madrid's regional president Isabel Díaz Ayuso described the situation as the "worst fire in the history of the region".

Sánchez said 130,000 hectares of land had been burned in Spain so far this year, ahead of an annual average of 100,000 hectares for the country over the last decade. 

A helicopter dumps water as firefighters collect water from a pool in El Tiemblo, outside Madrid

France's Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said 98,000 hectares have burned across the country since the beginning of 2026.

Meanwhile in Italy, more than 350 fires - including 10 major blazes - broke out on the island of Sicily, the head of the Sicilian Civil Protection said on Wednesday, prompting evacuations.

 

A major incident was also declared by emergency services in Scotland on Friday evening as they continue to tackle a wildfire in the Cairngorms National Park that has been burning for 10 days.

Hadja Lahbib, the EU's commissioner for crisis management, said it is likely that the damage from wildfires in Europe will surpass previous records.

She said fires had started earlier in the year when, in April, the Netherlands activated the EU's civil protection mechanism which triggers support and reinforcements from other countries.

Lahbib told the BBC: "Last year, one million hectares burned during the summer and so we are expecting to face another historical, sad record because the season has started earlier in the year."

She also warned that more outbreaks are likely as the summer goes on.

"Forecasters are predicting, unfortunately, another heatwave so we can expect other wildfires," Lahbib added.

France has activated the civil protection mechanism and will receive water bombers, comprising three Canadairs planes from Croatia and two Air Tractors from Portugal, as well as Black Hawk helicopters from the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and 40 members of a Romanian forest fire team.

 

EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said 11 planes and helicopters have also been sent to France and Spain from the EU's firefighting fleet.

Additional reporting by Mary Litchfield, BBC Your Voice and Srosh Khan, BBC Newsbeat

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.

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.

UK swelters in third heatwave of the year as western Europe counts cost of hottest-ever June. Britain expands heat alerts while estimates suggest June’s death toll could surpass 20,000 across continent

People shield themselves from the sun at the Victoria Memorial outside Buckingham Palace in London. Photograph: Vuk Valcic/Sopa Images/Shutterstock

 

by  Pippa Neill and Ajit Niranjan

The UK is sweltering through the peak of its third heatwave of the year as countries around Europe struggle to recover from an early onslaught of baking summer heat.

Punishing temperatures pushed higher by fossil fuel pollution have broken records across the continent in recent weeks. Western Europe experienced its hottest June on record, scientists confirmed on Thursday, accompanied by high global ocean temperatures that could cause “mass-mortality events” for some species.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) on Thursday expanded amber heat health alerts to cover all regions of England except the north-east, meaning significant impacts are likely across health and social care services owing to the high temperatures.

 

The UK Met Office said high temperatures would remain through much of next week, which could make the heatwave one of the longest lasting since the 1976 heatwave that killed 250 people. On Thursday temperatures surpassed 35C (95F) in Surrey, falling short of the provisional high of 37.7C recorded at Lingwood, Strumpshaw Hill, in Norfolk on 26 June.

The Met Office said Thursday was the eighth day this year where temperatures had surpassed 34C, breaking the previous records from 2020 and 1976 by one day.

Friederike Otto, a professor of climate science at Imperial College London, said the climate crisis was making every heatwave hotter, with events such as this month’s heatwave more likely to occur.

“The heat we have seen this summer is only possible because of the 1.4C of climate change we have to date, due to the burning of fossil fuels,” she said.

Otto said it was misleading to use the term “new normal” when describing this year’s scorching summer heat. “The climate we have today is not stable and continues to warm as long as we continue to burn fossil fuels. As a result, what is ‘normal’ keeps shifting and we’re likely to see much hotter heatwaves like this one in the years to come.”

 Many countries across Europe are still reckoning with the fallout from the last heatwave. On Thursday, Belgium’s public science institute said its June heat was “exceptionally deadly”, with 1,747 excess deaths, while the Robert Koch Institute reported 5,120 heat-related deaths in Germany this summer. Early academic estimates suggest the death toll across the continent could be higher than 20,000.

A firefighter sprays water on spectators watching the sixth stage of the Tour de France between Pau and Gavarnie-Gèdre in the French Pyrenees. Photograph: Loïc Venance/AFP/Getty Images

In France, where a nuclear reactor reportedly shut down in high heat on Thursday, scientists said the transformation of homes from “thermal kettles” into decent housing was a public health imperative.

France’s high council on climate, an independent body responsible for evaluating government climate action, urged policymakers to improve housing stock and make the creation of shaded green spaces an integral part of urban regeneration. In hospitals, care homes and schools, it recommended installing shutters, shade structures, ceiling fans, cooling systems, and fixed air-conditioning units.

The annual report, which is in its eighth edition, found France was not ready for the dangerous consequences of climate breakdown and said current policies were insufficient to avoid a sharp increase in risk.

A boy rests inside the Roman theatre in Arles, France. Photograph: Xinhua/Shutterstock

The scientists lamented the slowdown in climate action and called for a consolidated plan to phase out fossil fuels. “The cost of inaction is much higher than the cost of the transition,” the authors wrote, “which makes unilateral decarbonisation by major economies a rational choice that brings considerable welfare gains for societies”.

The NHS in England has said it is facing a “summer onslaught”, with the heatwave and the World Cup to blame. Average A&E attendances exceeded 80,000 for the first time ever in June, a new daily attendance record.

The NHS national medical director, Prof Frankie Swords, said the figures showed that summer was putting the NHS under just as much pressure as winter. South Central ambulance service NHS foundation trust said during the June heatwave there was a 118% increase in the number of times 999 emergency call takers directed members of the public to collect a nearby defibrillator for someone in suspected cardiac arrest.

More than 1,000 schools across the UK were either closed or partially closed during the June heatwave, and some schools have taken similar measures this week as they struggled to cope in poorly insulated buildings.

 

Water companies have reported increased demand, with a hosepipe ban already in force for South East Water customers in parts of Kent. Hosepipe restrictions are also being introduced for about 1 million Southern Water customers across Hampshire and the Isle of Wight from Friday.

Supermarkets across the UK have struggled to keep their fridge and freezer units running in the extreme heat, with many shoppers finding empty shelves at their local store and a hastily erected sign apologising for the inconvenience.

Rupert Ashby, the chief executive of the British Frozen Food Federation, said the trade association heard from a number of members who had encountered problems, and shops with older fridge-freezer units were being worst affected.

In older models, the refrigeration cycle components that pump out hot air are typically stored outside the building and are designed to work in ambient temperature. In an extreme heat event they do not work as efficiently, as they cannot pump the heat away.

 

Signs on blinds covering fridges in the chilled food aisle of a Sainsbury’s supermarket in England. Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images

 

 

 “These systems just weren’t designed to deal with this type of temperature because, historically, we rarely had it,” Ashby said. “But a major supermarket chain is probably looking at hundreds of millions of pounds to replace all its older units because they have so many.”

Phil Pluck, the chief executive of the Cold Chain Federation, said 50% of cold warehouses in the UK were more than 20 years old with old refrigeration systems, and the hot weather had massively increased energy usage and pressure on the system.

“As an industry, we are finding ourselves under more and more pressure,” he said. “I think we’ve got to admit that our climate is now clearly in crisis, and one of the things that will have to change will be our access to food via retail outlets. It will look different.”

He said open fridge-freezers in supermarkets would become less common, and standard practice would shift to using Perspex doors to keep heat out. Some supermarkets have installed pull-down blinds on their fridge units to help keep food cool.

 Additional reporting Jessica Murray

Europe’s livestock sector faces heatwave reckoning after millions of chickens die

 

by  Joshua Poole

France’s late-June heatwave killed an estimated 2.5 million to 3 million broiler chickens, according to Le Monde, with Brittany among the worst-hit regions. The scale of mortality overwhelmed rendering services and forced authorities to allow emergency on-farm burial in some cases, turning the heatwave into an animal welfare crisis and a logistical emergency for farmers. 

The heatwave’s impact extended beyond France. In Belgium, farmers warned that cows and pigs were suffering heat stress, reducing feed intake, milk yields, and growth rates. The rolling effects are expected to result in losses for dairy and meat production. 

 

The deaths have opened a wider debate over how European livestock farming can protect animals and farmers from climate extremes, while also cutting the emissions that help drive those extremes. 

 

Climate change-driven heatwaves

World Weather Attribution, an international scientific collaboration that studies the influence of climate change on extreme weather events, says this heatwave would have been “virtually impossible” 50 years ago without human-caused climate change.

The organization concluded that climate change is “unequivocally to blame” for its severity. It says a similar heatwave in 1976 would have been about 3.5°C cooler, and that the overnight temperatures experienced in Western Europe in the final week of June are about 100 times more likely today than during the 2003 European heatwave. 

We spoke with World Weather Attribution, which told us that Europe’s infrastructure, including farms and animal housing systems, was largely built for cooler historical conditions. This means Europe’s increasingly frequent heatwaves are a growing concern for animal welfare and livestock farmers.

 

Heatwave hell for farmed animals

Last year, Compassion in World Farming released a report on how climate change-linked extreme weather impacts farmed animals. The report says that heat stress can seriously harm livestock, causing breathing and heart problems, dehydration, weaker immunity, reduced fertility, lower milk production — and in severe cases, death.

“Factory farming contributes significantly to climate change, and, as temperatures rise, animals trapped in factory farms suffer even more,” Compassion in World Farming tells Food Ingredients First. “Millions of animals are confined in overcrowded sheds, left without enough water, and transported in vehicles where temperatures can become dangerously high.”

Brittany’s agriculture authority has reported significant deaths as a result of June’s heatwave, mainly on poultry farms. It has fast-tracked burial exemptions for farms hit by mass poultry or pig mortalities and expects a return to “normal collection and processing capacities” in early July.

 

European Livestock Voice responds

We also spoke with Anton van den Brink, chair of European Livestock Voice, a Brussels-based livestock-sector coalition. Van den Brink accepts that the livestock sector is both vulnerable to climate-driven heatwaves and a contributor to the emissions driving them.

“But the discussion needs to be fair and practical,” he tells us. He refers to a leaked draft of the EU Livestock Strategy, expected to be published this week, which suggests EU livestock accounts for 8% of total emissions in the EU (66% of agricultural emissions), around 4% of global agriculture emissions, and less than 1% of global total emissions.

“Livestock farmers are on the frontline of climate change: heatwaves directly affect animal welfare, productivity, farm workers, feed availability, and farm economics. At the same time, livestock production has emissions, and the sector accepts its responsibility to reduce them,” says van den Brink.

The transition to more sustainable livestock farming should be done, van den Brink says, through innovation, efficiency, and investment — not by pushing production out of Europe. “The worst outcome would be to weaken European farmers, while increasing imports from regions with lower standards,” he says.

 

 Preparing for future heatwaves

Compassion in World Farming has called for robust emergency protections ahead of further heatwaves. These include reliable access to water, lower stocking densities, good ventilation, and restrictions on transporting animals during extreme heat.

Commercial broiler farming, it adds, should urgently transition to slower-growing breeds, which are more resilient in higher temperatures.

 ¨Although these measures will help in the short term, the long-term solution is to move away from factory farming toward higher-welfare, more resilient farming systems that are better for animals, people, and the planet,” the NGO says

 

For European Livestock Voice, the question is how to support a more adaptable, lower-emission livestock sector.

“Adaptation has to become part of everyday farm management. This includes better ventilation and cooling systems, shade, access to water, adjusted feeding strategies, heat-resilient housing design, early-warning systems, contingency planning, and investment in animal health and welfare monitoring,” says van den Brink.

 

Costly business for farmers

However, transitioning to more climate-resilient farming is expensive, cautions van den Brink.

“Farmers cannot be expected to carry the full burden alone, especially when many are already under severe economic pressure. Public policy must support investment in climate-resilient farms through targeted funding, faster permits, practical guidance, and research that works under real farm conditions.”

He says a “sensible approach” includes improving feed efficiency, animal health, breeding, manure management, renewable energy use, precision farming, and circular use of resources.

The deaths in France reveal that extreme heat is testing the limits of Europe’s livestock systems. The question now is whether farms can adapt quickly enough to protect animals and farmers, while also reducing the sector’s contribution to the warming that is making such heatwaves more severe.