Wildfires Force Hundreds of Thousands to Evacuate in Spain and France
Around 330,000 people have been displaced as intense wildfires burn across southwestern France and Spain, with scientists warning that climate-driven heat is creating fire-generated weather patterns.
Around 330,000 residents and holiday-makers have been evacuated from the Iberian Peninsula and the Atlantic coast of France as large-scale wildfires continue to spread. In France's Gironde region near Bordeaux, the blaze has scorched an area four times the size of Paris, prompting the displacement of roughly 220,000 people, while fires in Spain have forced additional evacuations.
Fire-weather specialist Jean-Baptiste Filippi of France's Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique said the extreme heat is fueling the flames and that some fires are generating their own weather systems, making suppression efforts more difficult. He warned, > "You cannot stop a storm, so you will not stop a firestorm."
The European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service notes that Europe is warming at more than twice the global average, contributing to increasingly frequent and severe fire seasons across the continent.