France readies A400M retardant flights as Bordeaux wildfire forces evacuations

Lege-capferret,UPDATED: Jul 25, 2026 16:42 IST

France was preparing on Saturday to deploy a specially adapted A400M cargo aircraft to drop flame retardant on a major wildfire in the country’s west, as the blaze forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of people, including residents in some suburbs of Bordeaux.

Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said firefighters were facing a “long and very difficult” battle in the Gironde region. He said that fire, along with another blaze in the neighbouring Landes region, had forced 197,000 people to leave their homes. Across south-western France and central Spain, massive forest fires have led to the evacuation of more than 260,000 people.

Nunez said winds were expected to shift westward on Saturday afternoon, which could push the fire closer to Bordeaux. Fire crews and authorities were digging trenches, using retardants and taking other measures to stop its advance. He said the fire was about 30 kilometres west of the city.

The government mobilised soldiers to help fight the flames and sent 1.5 million face masks to protect people from heavy smoke. The prefect of the Gironde region, which includes Bordeaux, ordered the evacuation of parts of three western suburbs of the city. Other towns and villages further west were also told to evacuate.

Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu described the fires as unprecedented and said the Gironde blaze had become so intense that it was generating its own winds. “Our priority is clear: protecting human lives,” he posted on X, adding that evacuation orders “must be respected without delay.” He said firefighting teams were being reinforced on Saturday with hundreds of soldiers and that masks to filter smoke particles were being rushed to Gironde for people exposed to potentially harmful fumes.

The scale and speed of the fires caught authorities and fire crews off guard in both France and Spain. Firefighters in Spain said the blazes were spreading so fast and so violently that they could not be fought head on. In France, some people fled by boat when flames swept through tourist towns on the Atlantic coast. Dozens of French firefighters were injured, authorities said, but no deaths were reported in either country, even as people fled by car and police went door to door warning residents to leave under dark smoke-filled skies.

Successive heat waves that arrived unusually early and with record-breaking temperatures have left forests and scrubland extremely dry. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said fires had already burned 130,000 hectares of forest in Spain this year, compared with an annual average of 100,000 hectares over the past decade. Speaking at a command post west of Madrid on Saturday, he said better weather had opened “a window of opportunity” for crews to bring the fires under control. Madrid’s regional government said the fires had eased as winds and temperatures dropped.

Other European countries were also sending help. Italy said two Canadair water-bombing aircraft had been deployed to Spain. Spain’s Civil Protection Service said two more aircraft from Greece were expected on Saturday, joining planes already deployed from the Netherlands and Portugal. France was expecting two water-bombers from Croatia, two other aircraft from Portugal, and two heavy-lift Black Hawk helicopters from the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Gironde prefect Sophie Brocas said on Friday night that strong westerly winds 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.” She said people under evacuation orders were receiving special alerts on their mobile phones with instructions to leave. “We want everyone to be quickly brought to safety. We must act quickly together,” she said.

The Gironde fire broke out on Wednesday near the Cap Ferret peninsula on France’s Atlantic coast, 60 kilometres from Bordeaux. “It’s quite impressive and even frightening,” said Laurent Moretti, a resident of the town of Ares. “An evacuation on this scale has never happened before. All we really hope is that the firefighters can quickly get it under control.” With evacuations expanding, international help arriving and crews trying to stop the flames from moving closer to Bordeaux, authorities in France and Spain remained focused on protecting lives and containing the fires.

With PTI Inputs

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