French fire heads for Bordeaux as Spain battles record blaze | Today’s news
(Bloomberg) — French and Spanish firefighters, bracing for a sixth straight day to battle wildfires, are facing worsening weather conditions as temperatures are forecast to rise further.
As more than 300,000 people were evacuated in both countries over the weekend, a French official said the uncontrolled fire in the Gironde region on the southwest Atlantic coast was headed for Bordeaux, an urban center of 265,000 people.
“This is a fire that is completely erratic, that has no consistency, that comes and goes” and feeds on itself, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez told France 2 television on Sunday evening, refusing to rule out the blaze hitting Bordeaux. “We have to look at things calmly, of course, but also with realism.”
Temperatures are expected to rise in central Spain on Monday and in France from Tuesday. French and Spanish officials have said the fires are so intense they are creating their own microclimate.
In central Spain, the largest fires have spread to 77,000 hectares (190,000 acres), located between 50 and 100 kilometers (about 30 and 60 miles) south and west of Madrid. Another major Spanish fire is burning about 50 kilometers north of the coastal city of Valencia.
One of the fires outside Madrid, in the province of Ávila, has consumed 50,000 hectares of the total, making it the largest fire in recorded Spanish history, according to Environment Minister Sara Aagesen. This scorched land was mostly forested hills, while the affected areas south of Madrid are mostly scrubland and farmland.
As many as 41 Spanish highways have been cut, with about 60,000 people evacuated from their homes in recent days and about 30,000 ordered to shelter in place, in part to keep roads clear for firefighters and soldiers. A special military unit that specializes in natural disasters has deployed 1,500 soldiers.
The fires in Spain have been fueled by a combination of weather, mainly as the country suffered three heatwaves from June to mid-July that depleted soil moisture, along with denser-than-usual vegetation after an unusually wet winter. Similar reasons are given in France.
Weather experts say heat waves are starting earlier in the year and lasting longer than in the past because of climate change. Last year was the worst on record for European forest fires, burning more than 1 million hectares.
Forest prevention and management would have to be greatly intensified in Spain to avoid future fires of a similar scale, said Victor de Resco de Dios, a professor at the University of Lleida. He estimated the work would cost about 3 billion euros ($3.4 billion) a year.
In villages in the region of Madrid and Ávila, the extent of the destruction is looming. At the Pelayos Dam campsite, only the metal structures of the tents remain, which stand among rows of charred tree trunks stripped of their leaves by the fire. Smoke from the fire worsened air quality in many neighborhoods of the capital over the weekend.
–With help from Laura Millan.
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