Macron crisis meeting as Gironde wildfire nears Bordeaux
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- Macron convened a crisis cabinet meeting for Monday as the Gironde wildfire closed to within 15km of Bordeaux, with mayor Thomas Cazenave saying there were no plans to evacuate the city of 850,000
- The Gironde blaze generated an unprecedented "pyrocumulonimbus" — a fire thunderstorm fuelling itself with its own winds and lightning — that the National Firefighters Federation said cannot be fought directly
- France has burned 42,000 hectares in the south-west since the start of the latest outbreak, one of the largest forest fires since World War Two, and evacuated more than 220,000 people, per Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez
- Weather forecasts warned temperatures could spike to 40C in parts of France from Tuesday, with the Gironde fire described as "moving erratically" towards Bordeaux and requirng three days of heavy rain or steering toward the sea to die down
- Spain is battling a new blaze near Valencia that forced 15,000 evacuations and fires near Madrid and Ávila that have displaced more than 90,000 people, with Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez calling for "a major public pact on the climate emergency"
- The Ávila-region fire is the largest in Spain's recent history, with 77,000 hectares affected according to ecological transition minister Sara Aagesen, and King Felipe VI described the damage to natural heritage as "incalculable"
Why it matters: With 42,000 hectares already scorched in France's Gironde region and the fire generating its own thunderstorm that firefighters say cannot be directly attacked, the forecast of 40C temperatures from Tuesday will determine whether the blaze reaches Bordeaux's 850,000 residents or burns out — expanding what is already France's largest forest fire since World War Two.
