Firefighters battle wildfire as tens of thousands evacuated near Bordeaux
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- The Gironde wildfire has forced over 220,000 evacuations in France's south-west (including ~55,000 overnight from villages south of Bordeaux), burned 42,000 hectares — one of France's largest forest fires since WWII — and destroyed over 150 homes in Le Porge.
- Firefighting captain Nicolas Braz said the blaze created "its own winds - complete with whirlwinds," calling it "erratic and unmanageable," while rescue operations involve 2,500 firefighters, 1,500 military personnel, and nearly 1,200 police.
- Le Porge residents have set up volunteer networks cooking meals for exhausted firefighters, with volunteer Nathalie Augonnet saying "many of them have never experienced a fire of this magnitude before."
- Spain's wildfires have forced more than 90,000 evacuations around Madrid and Ávila, with the Ávila blaze described as the country's largest in recent history; a new front opened near Valencia, killing one civilian.
- Bordeaux Airport imposed air traffic control restrictions, delaying all commercial flights from 17:15 Sunday onward, and 60km of the A63 motorway to Spain was closed.
- The Tour de France final stage was shortened from 133km to 89km so security forces could be redeployed to the firefighting effort.
Why it matters: France mobilized 1,500 military personnel and shortened the Tour de France final stage to redeploy security to a Gironde wildfire that has burned 42,000 hectares — one of the country's largest since WWII. The Spanish fire near Ávila is now the largest in Spain's recent history, with Valencia's regional president admitting the blaze is 'beyond our capacity to extinguish.'
