Lacanau (France): France’s vast wildfire near Bordeaux, which scorched an area four times the size of Paris and forced 224,000 people to evacuate, remained contained Sunday but was still burning. Hundreds of kilometres (miles) away, a newer blaze in Provence had stopped advancing overnight but was not yet contained.
About 3,000 firefighters remained deployed across the two fronts, extinguishing hot spots, cutting firebreaks and securing areas of burned forest as high temperatures and wind threatened to breathe new life into smouldering embers.
The fire in the Gironde region burned about 420 square kilometres (162 square miles) in just 10 days before authorities declared its advance stopped over the weekend.
“The fire is now fixed, which does not mean that the fire is extinguished,” the Gironde prefecture said Sunday, using the French firefighting term for a blaze that has been contained within its perimeter.
The region remained under France’s highest red forest-fire alert. Dry conditions and soaring temperatures in Bordeaux, along with afternoon winds, risked rekindling flames.
Additional firefighters from Ukraine, Lithuania and French Polynesia were expected Sunday and Monday to reinforce the operation.
Human-caused climate change doubled the chances of extreme fire conditions for the flames in France, scientists at World Weather Attribution calculated in a rapid analysis Thursday, conducted while fires were still burning.
Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent, with temperatures increasing at twice the speed as the global average since the 1980s, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
Blaze in Provence has stopped expanding but not yet contained
The Gironde blaze prompted one of the largest peacetime evacuations in modern French history. Many thousands of people remained displaced or unable to reach their homes.
In the southeastern Var department, meanwhile, nearly 1,500 firefighters were battling a separate fire that tore through roughly 18 square kilometres – seven square miles – in little more than a day.
Authorities said the blaze in the Gros Bessillon hills was stabilized Sunday morning, meaning its perimeter had not expanded overnight. But unlike the Gironde fire, it had not yet been declared contained.
Firefighting aircraft supported crews working to keep the flames away from villages set among the vineyards, olive groves and wooded hills of the region known as Green Provence.
About 2,500 people were evacuated as the fire threatened communities.
The blaze was the fourth major fire to strike the central Var since July 19. A separate, smaller fire near Brignoles earlier in the week forced Hollywood star George Clooney and his family, along with about 700 other residents, to evacuate before it was brought under control.
Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu said France’s wildfires were generally under control but cautioned that conditions remained highly changeable.
Lecornu also announced the appointment of a national coordinator to oversee reconstruction in fire-ravaged areas. More than 1,170 square kilometres (452 square miles) have burned across France since the beginning of the year.
