A massive wildfire that forced around 220,000 people to flee their homes in southwestern France has stopped expanding after burning for days, but authorities warned the crisis is far from over as firefighters continue battling hotspots under challenging weather conditions.
France’s Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said the fire made no further progress overnight, offering a measure of relief after one of the country’s largest wildfire emergencies in recent years. However, he cautioned cautioned that it isn’t yet beaten.
“It hasn’t progressed during the night. We have to remain very concentrated, very determined, to go at any moment.”
Laurent Nuñez
He spoke after French President Emmanuel Macron held a crisis meeting focusing on the massive firefighting effort in the Gironde region and on wildfires elsewhere. Macron didn’t immediately comment after the government crisis meeting he presided over.
Nonetheless, in a weekend post on X, he pledged long-term support for fire-hit communities, saying, “We will rebuild, we will repair and we will be present for as long as necessary.”
The Gironde blaze has burned an area four times the size of Paris. The region’s prefecture said the situation overnight had remained “globally stable” — a change from previous days where the giant blaze raging since last week edged closer to the wine region city of Bordeaux. In the adjacent southwestern Landes region, where hundreds of firefighters have been making progress against another virulent but smaller fire, the prefecture said some rain fell overnight and described the conditions as “favorable” for firefighting but also cautioned that they could change.
No new evacuations were announced. However with France about to enter its peak August tourist season, Gironde authorities took more steps to keep vacationers away, banning holiday camps for children and for people with disabilities.
With thousands of firefighters on the ground and rotations of water- and retardant-dropping aircraft in the air, the massive firefighting effort was engaged in a race against time, battling to make progress before a forecast surge in temperatures from Tuesday that could make fighting flames more difficult.
Crews using earth movers tore up strips of forest and scrubland to create barren spaces, intended to stop fires from spreading. Farmers were keeping fire crews supplied with water, transporting it to them in tanks.
The blaze has injured 84 firefighters. Some 2,500 firefighters, 1,500 military personnel and 1,200 police officers and gendarmes have been deployed.The CFDT firefighters’ union said personnel were being sent into dangerous conditions without sufficient protection from carcinogenic smoke and particles. It called for new filtering hoods to be issued more widely and said at least four firefighters had required treatment in hyperbaric chambers after suffering carbon monoxide poisoning.
French Finance Minister Roland Lescure also said that the wildfires around Bordeaux in southwestern France have dealt a sudden blow to an already struggling region.
Fires In France, Spain Force Over 330,000 People To Flee
Around a dozen countries have provided planes, helicopters, firefighters and other assistance to both France and Spain, which is also fighting unprecedented blazes. All told, fires in both countries have forced more than 330,000 people to flee.
In both Spain and France, the exceptional scale of the fires, fueled by heat waves that hit especially hard and early this year, making forests and scrubland tinder-dry, are driving calls for stronger action against climate change.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez bemoaned the situation.
“What we are experiencing is not a series of isolated incidents. It is the consequence of a climate emergency that is making wildfires even more violent, heat waves more frequent.”
Pedro Sánchez
In Spain, wildfires have burned out of control around Madrid and in the Valencia region. Authorities evacuated 76,000 people and confined 30,000 others to their homes.
Authorities said today that the fires were “not yet under control,” although they planned to reopen a campsite from which 4,500 people had been evacuated and allow some elderly residents to return home in another area if conditions permitted.
A fire raging in hilly, rural terrain in Ávila, west of Madrid, has become Spain’s largest on record, scorching 50,000 hectares (193 square miles), the government said. That is five times the size of Barcelona.
Sara Aagesen, the Ecology Minister said that fires have burned 153,000 hectares (590 square miles) this year in Spain, six times the area scorched by blazes in the first half of 2025.
The Minister said that another heat wave forecast from Tuesday, which would be Spain’s fourth so far this year, could increase the fire danger.
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