France, Spain race to curb wildfires before new heatwave arrives

BORDEAUX, July 27: Firefighters sought on Monday to take advantage of more favourable weather conditions to subdue massive wildfires threatening the French city and wine region of Bordeaux and a number of sites in neighbouring Spain.

They were racing against the clock as another heatwave is expected to hit in both countries later this week, in what has been a blisteringly hot and dry summer across Western Europe.

About 220,000 people, including tourists and local residents, have been evacuated in France, while further south in Spain around 100,000 have been told to leave their homes or seek shelter, authorities said.

Firefighters faced an especially dangerous situation in Valld'Uixó, in the eastern Castellon province, where the ground contains old ordnance from the Spanish Civil War that explodes when the flames reach the area, CheviBolumar, fire chief of the Valencian Regional Government, told public broadcaster TVE.

The French blazes, which broke out last week near the Atlantic coast, are now only 15 kilometres (9.3 miles) from entry points to the main metropolitan area of Bordeaux.

"This is a fire of a size never seen before," Jerome Steffe, mayor of Cestas, said on Monday. Cestas is one of the suburbs just outside the main Bordeaux city area.

French President Emmanuel Macron was due to visit the region later on Monday, his office said.

The spread of the large fires converging in central Spain slowed overnight, authorities said, but the blaze in the Castellon province raged out of control as the weather agency warned of another potential heatwave this week.

"What we're experiencing isn't a succession of isolated events. It's the most painful expression of a climate emergency that is making sixth-generation wildfires more ferocious, heatwaves more frequent, and our territory more vulnerable," Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Monday.

Reuters adds, French President Emmanuel Macron held a crisis meeting Monday focusing on monster, uncontrolled wildfires that have forced more than 250,000 people to flee their homes, amid a first glimmer of hope that the spread of the largest blaze may have slowed.

In the Gironde region of southwest France, where flames have burned an area four times the size of Paris, the 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.�"AGENCIES