On Monday, French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said that the massive wildfire in the Gironde department near Bordeaux has been stabilized, but that conditions remain unfavorable.
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“This is an unprecedented fire,” he said after an interministerial crisis unit meeting on the wildfires chaired by President Emmanuel Macron, followed by a full Cabinet meeting.
Given the unpredictable nature of the wildfire, Nuñez urged the public to exercise the utmost caution and acknowledged that authorities will continue to consider the situation “unfavorable” until the fire is fully contained.
That assessment comes despite improved conditions overnight compared with previous nights, as officials recorded no advance of the flames beyond the 42,000 hectares that had already burned as of Sunday.
At least 2,500 firefighters, 1,700 gendarmes and police officers, and 1,500 military personnel are working in the area, along with volunteer organizations and farmers assisting in support roles. Authorities have deployed 18 aircraft of various types to drop both water and fire retardant over the affected area.
The number of evacuees remains at 220,000, and authorities do not expect them to return home in the near term, not until the fire is fully contained. That effort could be complicated by rising temperatures expected beginning Tuesday as France faces its fourth heat wave of the year, with temperatures in the southwest forecast to reach as high as 40 degrees Celsius.
Macron is scheduled to travel to Gironde on Monday afternoon, the epicenter of a crisis that is setting historic records for the amount of land burned. So far this year, with the summer wildfire season still far from over, 116,085 hectares have already burned in France, well above the 70,000 hectares destroyed during all of 2022, which had previously been the country’s worst wildfire year on record.
teleSUR/ JF
Source: EFE
Source: teleSUR English
