Wildfire leads to evacuations in some suburbs of the French city of Bordeaux

Firefighters and authorities in both European countries were caught off guard by the virulence of the fires, which were fueled by high temperatures and the long-term effects of climate change. Firefighters in Spain admitted the fires were so fast and violent that they could not be tackled head on. In France, some people even fled by boat when flames swept through touristic towns on the Atlantic coast.

Some 141,000 fled homes in the Gironde and Landes departments in France, the French interior ministry said. In central Spain, 60,000 were forced from their homes west of Madrid, according to the Spanish interior ministry.

Dozens of French firefighters have been injured, authorities said, but no deaths were reported in either country despite the scenes of panic as townsfolk fled by car and police went door to door to tell people to leave as large plumes of smoke darkened the skies.

On Saturday, the Madrid regional government said the fires there decreased in intensity overnight as winds and temperatures dropped.

Spain’s Civil Protection Service said it was expecting the arrival Saturday of four more water-dumping aircraft — two from Italy and two from Greece — sent as part of a European Union response to the emergency. Firefighting aircraft from the Netherlands and Portugal are already deployed in Spain.

Wildfire headed toward Bordeaux

Gironde region prefect Sophie Brocas said on Friday night that strong winds from the west were pushing the fire closer to the Bordeaux metropolitan area and that it had grown to “an unprecedented magnitude.”

“The scale of the fire changed,” she said. “To combat it, we will receive extremely significant national reinforcements. Reinforcements in firefighters, of course, reinforcements in military personnel, reinforcements in healthcare workers, reinforcements in experts. So, we are going to form a much larger team to face this extraordinary fire.”

People covered by the evacuation orders were being sent special alerts to their mobile phones, giving them instructions to leave.

“We want everyone to be quickly brought to safety. We must act quickly together,” Brocas said.

The blaze started on Wednesday near Cap Ferret peninsula on France’s Atlantic coast, located 60 kilometers (37 miles) from Bordeaux. On Friday, French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez described it as “a large, self-sustaining fire that is extremely difficult to bring under control.”

“It’s quite impressive and even frightening,” said Laurent Moretti, a resident in the town of Arès. “An evacuation on this scale has never happened before. All we really hope is that the firefighters can quickly get it under control.”

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Leicester reported from Paris. Associated Press journalist Barry Hatton in Lisbon, Portugal, contributed.

Mark Carlson, Emma Da Silva And John Leicester, The Associated Press

by The Canadian Press

Wildfire leads to evacuations in some suburbs of the French city of Bordeaux

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