The fire declared in the department of Gironde, which has caused the evacuation of 167,000 people as it advanced towards Bordeaux, has already burned more than 32,700 hectares and is the largest recorded in France in the last 50 years. The Minister of the Interior, Laurent Núñez, warned that 2026, with more than 98,000 hectares already burned, is already the year with the most forest area incinerated, ahead of the 2022 wave of fires.
An A400M military aircraft and 500 soldiers joined the firefighting efforts on Saturday against the fire, which is already 30 kilometers from Bordeaux, after having forced the evacuation of the tourist peninsula of Cap Ferret and the suburb of Mérignec, where the airport of the ninth French city is located. “The Prime Minister has asked us to work on all scenarios, including the evacuation of Bordeaux, even if we do everything possible to prevent the fire from reaching it,” declared Laurent Núñez. “The evacuation of Bordeaux is not on the agenda,” however, replied Mayor Thomas Cazenave, asking the city’s 250,000 inhabitants to remain calm.
Three men were arrested this Saturday on charges related to starting the fire in Gironde. Two of the detainees are, according to information from the Bordeaux Prosecutor’s Office cited by the public channel Franceinfo, two men aged 19 and 21, employees in the restaurant sector, who were arrested at dawn in La-Teste-de-Buch, south of the tourist bay of Arcachon, where the Gironde fire originated. They are accused of having launched fireworks towards the highway and a sports complex.
The third detainee, according to the same sources, is a 33-year-old man who was arrested on the outskirts of Bordeaux, in Lormont, “for intentionally setting fire to bushes.”
In total, seven municipalities had been evacuated in the last three days, with 67,000 residents forced to leave their homes between Friday and Saturday. The fire also threatened a high-risk industrial zone in Saint-Mérdard-en-Jalles, where components for missiles and the European Ariane rocket are manufactured.
More than 800 firefighters joined the extinction efforts in Gironde for a fire that was particularly complex due to frequent wind changes. The personnel took advantage of a small “truce” on Saturday to attack the fire front by digging trenches and initiating tactical burns.
The delay in the use of the A400M military aircraft, capable of discharging 20,000 liters of water in a matter of seconds, generated some political controversy in the meantime. At the beginning of summer, it had been suggested that Spain – before France – would be the “official tester” for the use of the Airbus military cargo plane adapted for firefighting.
“The Government will have to answer to the French for the delay in the use of the A400M and for the lack of civil protection means,” wrote Jordan Bardella, president of the National Rally, on his X account. “Rage!” wrote Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of La France Insoumise, who claimed to have issued an alert ten days ago about the high risk of fires after the recent heatwaves.
Emmanuel Macron acknowledged on Thursday “the enormous tension due to the fires ravaging the country” and requested “aerial assistance” from the European Union to extinguish the fires. The French president confirmed the dispatch of two Canadair amphibious planes from Croatia and two Air Tractor aircraft from Portugal, as well as two Black Hawk helicopters from the Czech Republic.
Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu, for his part, announced on Friday evening the dispatch of 500 military personnel to the departments of Gironde and Les Landes, in the southwest of the hexagon. After a meeting of the crisis cabinet, also activated during the heatwave that claimed an additional 5,764 deaths in France, Lecornu acknowledged that the fires have reached an “unprecedented” level.
The second most important fire, out of about thirty active fires in the country, was the one declared in Les Landes, with 3,000 hectares burned and preventive evacuations of at least three municipalities (Biscarrosse, Parentis, and Sanguinet). The third major fire was declared this week in the Var region, between Nice and Marseille. Residents of Pintevès and Montfort-sur-Argens, who were also evacuated, have been able to return to their homes this weekend.
