Europe wildfires latest: Bordeaux considering ‘total evacuation of city if necessary’ after blaze spreads further – UK Times

France’s gendarmerie, a branch of the French armed forces, have shared footage of an evacuation of a family from a village near a new fire outbreak.

“All state services are fully mobilised to protect the population and property, day and night,” it wrote in a post on X alongside the footage.

France’s interior minister Laurent Nunez has provided an update following another “tough night” of wildfires.

“The situation remains highly unfavourable,” he wrote in a post on X on Sunday.

“At the start of the night, in Gironde, the fire became extremely virulent and unpredictable again, generating its own wind and spreading erratically toward the Bordeaux metropolitan area.

“By the end of the night, it had calmed down somewhat..

He said that the burned area now stands at 42,300 hectares of land and that an additional 50,000 people were evacuated.

Over 280,000 people have been forced to evacuate their homes as wildfires continue to rage across Spain and France.

Government officials from both countries have commented on the historic nature of the blaze, with Madrid’s regional president Isabel Díaz Ayuso describing it “the worst fire in the history of the region”.

“The fires ‌which are hitting our country have reached a level that has never ​been seen before,” French ‌prime minister Sebastien Lecornu wrote on X on Saturday.

Lecornu promised that over 1.5 million face masks would be provided as even areas unaffected by the worst of the blaze saw air quality deteriorate and smoke spread.

Below we look at the areas affected and evacuated as a result of the wildfires.

Bordeaux City Council is exploring options to deal with the various ways the wildfires nearby could evolve, including a total evacuation of the city, a spokesperson told Sky News.

The Council is “currently studying scenarios for all possible ways the fire could evolve”, they said, which includes a total evacuation of the city, if needed.

Surrounding areas have been evacuated as the fire advanced amid high winds. The city is the sixth largest in France.

As dry, windy weather fueled a big wildfire near a city in central Oregon, a fourth firefighter died after he and several colleagues last month were overcome by a fast-moving wildfire near the Colorado-Utah border, authorities said Saturday.

Nathan Matthews, 43, of Lincoln, Nebraska, died Friday, the federal Interior Department said in a statement. Meanwhile, several fierce wildfires in a summer of big ones continued burning across the western US.

One of the worst – and the one deemed top priority for firefighting efforts – was just a few miles (5km) north of Sisters, a central Oregon city of about 3,000 people.

A wildfire spread in Haddada municipality in Algeria’s northeastern Souk Ahras province on Saturday, as firefighters responded to the blaze.

Footage released by Algeria’s Civil Protection showed firefighters battling flames in a forested area as smoke rose above the wildfire.