LEGE-CAP FERRET, France\u00a0\u2014\u00a0France sent a hulking military cargo plane to dump tons of flame retardants as it battled raging wildfires on Saturday and slashed the final stage of the Tour de France to redeploy security personnel to the blazes, which have forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes.<\/p>\n
The latest wildfires in southern Europe this week have displaced more than 250,000 people, including some 70,000 who were evacuated in central Spain. One man died in Manises, the Spanish municipality reported on its Facebook page, the first reported death in the fires. <\/p>\n
In France, the giant A400M transporter swooped in low, its long plume of ocher-colored retardant trailing over drought-hit woodlands in the southwest as fire crews on the ground fought flames that authorities feared could spread toward the wine region city of Bordeaux.<\/p>\n
Race organizers and the Paris police department announced a truncated 21st and final stage on Sunday for the three-week Tour, France\u2019s most famous annual sporting event, reflecting the immense strain that two large fires in the southwest are causing for emergency services.<\/p>\n
Tour riders will race Sunday inside Paris rather than starting from Thoiry, west of the capital, on a circuit of 55 miles \u2014 down by about a third from the 82.5-mile route that had been planned. Part of the race\u2019s security detail will instead \u201creinforce the response efforts in the areas affected by the wildfires,\u201d according to the statement announcing the \u201dexceptional measures made necessary by the situation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shifting winds raise concerns for Bordeaux<\/p>\n
With winds expected to shift in a west-to-east direction on Saturday afternoon, potentially driving flames closer to Bordeaux, fire crews and authorities were digging trenches, using retardants and taking other fire-blocking steps, French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said, predicting a \u201clong and very difficult\u201d battle.<\/p>\n
He said the fire was about 20 miles west of the city and lost some of its intensity overnight. The prefect of the Gironde region that includes Bordeaux said the blaze grew into \u201ca firestorm\u201d on Friday after igniting this week and cautioned that it \u201cremains dangerous\u201d even though firefighters were making progress.<\/p>\n
The government mobilized soldiers to join fire crews and was rushing in 1.5 million face masks to protect against noxious smoke.<\/p>\n
Authorities ordered people between the fire and Bordeaux to evacuate, including from parts of the city\u2019s western suburbs and other towns and villages.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister S\u00e9bastien Lecornu described the fires as unprecedented and said the Gironde blaze became so strong Friday that it had begun generating its own winds. Firefighting teams were being reinforced with the addition of hundreds of soldiers and masks, Lecornu said.<\/p>\n
In Bordeaux, authorities took in thousands of evacuees, offering them food and shelter in an exhibition center, and the city\u2019s mayor said it could be equipped to welcome as many as 10,000 people if necessary. The city\u2019s airport said it remained open but its bus and tram services were suspended.<\/p>\n
Evacuation orders were sent with special alerts to mobile phones, instructing people to leave, Gironde prefect Sophie Brocas said. She said the fire had destroyed about 140 homes in the region.<\/p>\n
Magnitude caught authorities off guard<\/p>\n
The French military A400M transport plane, specially converted for firefighting, was a heavyweight new tool in the battle. It joined at least 18 other water- and retardant-dropping aircraft and helicopters that Nunez said were deployed in the Gironde region, working in rotation in the smoke-filled skies.<\/p>\n
The virulence of the French and Spanish wildfires, fueled by high temperatures and the long-term effects of climate change, caught fire crews and authorities off guard.<\/p>\n
Firefighters in Spain said the blazes spread so fast and violently that they could not be tackled head on. In France, some people fled by boat when flames swept through tourist towns on the Atlantic coast.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve never seen anything like this,\u201d said Javier Organista, a resident of El Tiemblo, west of Madrid, where fire charred a famed chestnut grove. \u201cWhen we saw the flames coming into our town, surrounding us, leaving us with practically no way out, all the neighbors joined together to try to stop its advance.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just really sad,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Climate change supercharges fires<\/p>\n
Spain deployed 2,600 firefighters, police and other emergency personnel to two blazes west of Madrid, backed by 19 water-dumping aircraft and helicopters.<\/p>\n
France deployed 1,400 firefighters to the Gironde fire and hundreds of others to another wildfire farther south in the Landes region. Dozens of firefighters suffered injuries, authorities said, amid scenes of panicked residents fleeing by car as police went door to door telling people to leave.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Fires have burned about 320,000 acres of forest already this year in Spain, up from an annual average of about 250,000 acres over the last decade, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro S\u00e1nchez said Saturday as he visited a command post west of Madrid.<\/p>\n
He said more favorable weather Saturday offered \u201ca window of opportunity\u201d for fire crews to bring the blazes under control. Madrid\u2019s regional government said the blazes decreased in intensity as winds and temperatures dropped.<\/p>\n
The fatality reported Saturday occurred in Manises, part of the wildfire-affected region of Valencia.<\/p>\n
Other European nations were helping, with Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, Portugal, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Sweden, Slovakia, Germany and Switzerland providing or expected to deploy water-dumping planes and helicopters to the Spanish and French fire fronts.<\/p>\n
Carlson, Silva and Leicester write for the Associated Press. Leicester reported from Paris. AP journalists Barry Hatton in Lisbon, Portugal; Manu Fernandez in El Tiemblo, Spain; and Joseph Wilson in Barcelona, Spain, contributed to this report. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LEGE-CAP FERRET, France\u00a0\u2014\u00a0France sent a hulking military cargo plane to dump tons of flame retardants as it battled…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60998,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1166,22081,24519,24582,6165,3144,22082,24583,556,22877,24584,82,3402,1726,1861,17],"class_list":["post-60997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-spain","tag-authority","tag-blaze","tag-bordeaux","tag-central-spain","tag-city","tag-fire","tag-firefighter","tag-flame-retardant","tag-france","tag-helicopter","tag-high-temperature","tag-madrid","tag-people","tag-portugal","tag-saturday","tag-spain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}