Man's death reported in Spain as wildfires also raging in France force 250,000 to flee

Man's death reported in Spain as wildfires also raging in France force 250,000 to flee

Final Tour de France stage shortened to redeploy officers to wildfires

Wildfires in southern Europe this week have displaced more than 250,000 people, including some 70,000 people evacuated in central Spain.

One man died in Manises, west of Valencia, the Spanish municipality says on its Facebook page, marking the first reported death in the blazes.

A specially adapted cargo aircraft was sent to dump flame retardants on a huge blaze raging in the Gironde region of southwestern France.

French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said the hulking A400M aircraft will join 18 other water- and retardant-dropping planes and helicopters waging an expected "long and very difficult" battle against the blaze raging in the Gironde region of southwestern France.

Raging wildfires in France and Spain force tens of thousands of people to flee

With winds expected to shift in a west-to-east direction on Saturday afternoon, potentially driving the fire closer to Bordeaux, fire crews and authorities were digging trenches, using retardants and taking other steps to block it, Nunez said. He said the fire was about 30 kilometres west of the city and lost some of its intensity overnight.

The government mobilized soldiers to join the battle and was rushing in 1.5 million face masks to protect against choking smoke.

Thousands flee 'nightmare' wildfires in southwestern France

Authorities ordered people between the fire and Bordeaux to evacuate, including from parts of the city's western suburbs and other towns and villages.

French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu described the fires as unprecedented and said the Gironde blaze became so strong on Friday that it had begun 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 Saturday with the addition of hundreds of soldiers and that breathing masks to filter out smoke particles were being rushed to the Gironde region for those exposed to the clouds of potentially noxious fumes.

The country cut the length of the Tour de France's final stage by a third on Saturday to redeploy officers to battle raging wildfires that forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of people, including from some the suburbs of the wine region city of Bordeaux.

The extraordinary measure underscored the gravity of the fires in southwest France.

The riders will race inside Paris, rather than starting from Thoiry west of the capital, on a circuit of 89 kilometres, down from the 133-kilometre route that had been planned. Part of the race's security detail will instead be used "to reinforce the response efforts in the areas affected by the wildfires," the Paris police department said.

Blazes caught authorities off guard

The virulence of the wildfires, fuelled by high temperatures and the long-term effects of climate change, caught fire crews and authorities off guard in both countries.

Firefighters in Spain said the blazes spread so fast and violently that they could not be tackled head on. In France, some people even fled by boat when flames swept through touristic towns on the Atlantic coast.

Dozens of French firefighters have been injured, authorities said, but no deaths were reported in either country despite the scenes of panic as townsfolk fled by car and police went door to door to tell people to leave as large plumes of smoke darkened the skies.

Successive heat waves that hit unusually early and hard this year, baking Europe with record-shattering high temperatures, have turned forests and scrublands into tinderboxes.

Fires have burned 130,000 hectares of forest already this year in Spain, up from an annual average of 100,000 hectares over the past decade, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said Saturday as he visited a command post west of Madrid.

He said more favourable weather Saturday offered "a window of opportunity" for fire crews to bring the blazes under control. Madrid's regional government said the fires decreased in intensity as winds and temperatures dropped.

Other European nations were helping, with Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, Portugal, Croatia, Czechia and Slovakia already providing or expected to deploy water-dumping planes and helicopters to the Spanish and French fire fronts.

Wildfire headed toward Bordeaux

Gironde region prefect Sophie Brocas said on Friday night that strong winds from the west were pushing the fire closer to the Bordeaux metropolitan area and that it had grown to "an unprecedented magnitude."

Bordeaux's western suburbs covered by evacuation orders included Le Haillan and parts of Eysines and Mérignac, where the city's airport is located.

The airport said it remained open but that its bus and tram services were suspended.

The Gironde blaze broke out Wednesday near the Cap Ferret peninsula on France's Atlantic coast, 60 kilometres from Bordeaux. Bordeaux authorities took in thousands of evacuees, offering them food and shelter in an exhibition centre, and the city's mayor said it could be equipped to welcome as many as 10,000 people if that became necessary.

Evacuation orders were sent with special alerts to mobile phones, instructing people to leave, Brocas said.

"We want everyone to be quickly brought to safety. We must act quickly together."