Thousands flee wildfires in France and Spain

Luggage-laden residents and tourists fled a French peninsula by boat and the smell of smoke drifted into parts of Madrid on Friday as wildfires swept France and Spain, triggering states of emergencies and calls for EU help. In France, fires scorching through dense pine forests near the prized wine region of Bordeaux forced hundreds to flee the upscale Cap Ferret peninsula in the middle of the summer holiday season, as the blaze devoured an area nearly twice the size of Manhattan. Several blazes were also raging out of control less than 100 kilometres (60 miles) from Madrid, with some residents of the Spanish capital waking up to the smell of smoke.

Two fires west of the city were on the verge of merging and “becoming a single blaze advancing towards Navas del Rey,” a town some 50 kilometres from Madrid’s outskirts, said Francisco Martin, a senior local official. Thick acrid smoke billowed into the sky as a wall of fire crept along parched earth, according to aerial images by Spanish authorities. Fanned by wind and scorching temperatures topping 40C in some areas, the blazes have killed three firefighters and forced the evacuation of some 50 000 people in the two countries.

“The smoke was incredibly thick. You couldn’t breathe,” Jose Cobos, who fled his home some 50 kilometres southwest of Madrid with his wife and three dogs, told Antena 3 television as he waited anxiously to learn if his house was still standing. French authorities have ordered thousands of tourists on the southwestern Atlantic coast out of campsites and holiday homes, as firefighters backed by water-bombing planes raced to control the blazes.

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More than 40 000 people have been evacuated in the region so far. Both France and Spain have appealed to the European Union for help, with Madrid requesting four specialised planes on Friday, a day after Paris asked Brussels for more resources. The European Union said it was deploying four planes to Spain and three to France to help fight the blazes.

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