BORDEAUX(National Times)- Unchecked wildfires raging on Saturday in France’s southwest and near Spain’s capital Madrid have forced nearly 260,000 people to flee and prompted Paris to deploy its military.
France hustled 197,000 people from areas around Bordeaux — including vacation spots crowded this time of year — in what was “probably” the biggest peacetime evacuation the country has seen, its interior minister said.
In Spain, where 60,000 people were evacuated from villages west of Madrid, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said the priority was “to save lives” as he visited the fire zone. Officials in Madrid had earlier given a higher estimate of around 70,000 people evacuated.
In the Spanish town of Brunete, west of Madrid, mayor Mar Nicolas said she was “very worried”. “Every year there are fires, but this one has been tremendous,” she said. “It is a catastrophe.” A separate wildfire near the eastern Spanish city of Valencia killed one person before firefighters brought it under control.
Overstretched firefighters in Spain and France battling around the clock for days have been unable to contain the infernos, though authorities in both countries suggested the intensity of some of the blazes had notched down. Two French firefighters died earlier this week near Bordeaux.
French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said the blaze in the Gironde region where Bordeaux is located was less intense and no longer a “convective” type of fire that self-fuels through rising currents. Officials in Madrid also said the fires had advanced little overnight and decreased in intensity. But the battles were far from won.
The threat in Gironde “remains very serious,” said top regional official Sophie Brocas. Spain’s Sanchez warned: “We are going to have some complex hours ahead.” Jacqueline Villafranca, a 38-year-old who evacuated to Madrid on Friday, said that when smoke filled her village of Navalagamella “I thought everything was going to burn, the house and everything”.
“Here you can breathe normally — yesterday it was unbearable,” she said, sitting in a gymnasium-turned-shelter.
98,000 hectares burned in France
The wildfires currently raging across France have burned nearly 98,000 hectares, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said on Saturday, describing the total as a “historic record.”
“There are still a number of fires across the country that have not yet been brought under control,” he said, singling out major blazes in the southwestern departments of Gironde and Landes.
Nasa site hit
Massive wildfires in Europe on Friday forced Nasa to evacuate one of its three global deep space communications facilities in Spain, impacting the agency’s ability to communicate with space probes.
The Madrid Deep Space Com­munications Complex (MDSCC) is located in Robledo, about 37 miles (65 kilometers) west of central Madrid, a Nasa spokesperson said in a statement.
“The wildfire has passed through the MDSCC. Any potential damage will be assessed when it is safe to do so,” the US space agency said, adding all personnel were “safely evacuated.” MDSCC is part of the Deep Space Network, one of three sites that allow Nasa to communicate with its spacecraft exploring distant parts of the galaxy.
The other two sites are in Canberra, Australia and Goldstone, California, where the agency has seamlessly transitioned support for mission operations.