LEGE-CAP FERRET, France — Fire crews and planes wrestled Monday to bring a monster wildfire under control in southwest France before a forecast jump in temperatures complicates the massive firefighting effort against a blaze that has burned an area four times the size of Paris.
Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said the fire had stopped growing, a first glimmer of hope since the inferno forced a staggering 220,000 people to flee in the region around the city of Bordeaux.
But with woodlands still smoldering, the minister cautioned that the battle isn’t yet won.
“It hasn’t progressed during the night,” Nunez said. “We have to remain very concentrated, very determined, to go at any moment.”
He spoke after French President Emmanuel Macron held a crisis meeting Monday focused on the blaze in the Gironde region and wildfires that crews continue to tackle elsewhere.
The Gironde prefecture said the situation overnight remained “globally stable” — a change from previous days when officials said flames had crept to within 10 miles of the outskirts of Bordeaux, a historic city of 268,000 people, and generated self-feeding firestorms with lightning bolts that ignited more blazes.
No new evacuations were announced Monday. But with France about to enter its peak August tourist season, Gironde authorities worked to keep vacationers away, banning holiday camps for children and for people with disabilities. Nunez also urged people to avoid the region, popular for its Atlantic beaches and some of France’s largest woodlands.
In the adjacent southwestern Landes region, where hundreds of firefighters have been making progress against another virulent but smaller fire, the prefecture said some rain fell overnight and described the conditions as “favorable” for firefighting but also cautioned that they could change.
With thousands of firefighters on the ground and rotations of water- and retardant-dropping aircraft, it became a race against time before an expected heat wave that could make fighting flames more difficult. The national weather service forecast temperatures above 95 degrees Fahrenheit in the southwest on Tuesday and likely higher on Wednesday.
“We know temperatures are going to climb again, that we’ll enter a phase of intense heat and so we really have to remain very cautious,” Nunez said. “As long as the fire isn’t contained, the situation remains unfavorable.”
Crews using earth movers tore up strips of forest and scrubland to create barren spaces, intended to stop fires from spreading. Farmers were keeping fire crews supplied with water, transporting it to them in tanks.
Around a dozen countries have provided planes, helicopters, firefighters and other assistance to both France and Spain, which is also fighting unprecedented blazes. All told, fires in the two countries have forced more than 330,000 people to flee.
In Spain, wildfires have burned out of control around Madrid and in the Valencia region. Authorities evacuated 79,000 people and confined 30,000 others to their homes.
In both Spain and France, the exceptional scale of the fires — fueled by heat waves that hit especially hard and early this year, making forests and scrubland tinder-dry — are driving calls for stronger action against climate change.
“What we are experiencing is not a series of isolated incidents. It is the consequence of a climate emergency that is making wildfires even more violent, heat waves more frequent,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said.
Another heat wave forecast from Tuesday — which would be Spain’s fourth so far this year — could ratchet up the fire danger. Spain’s weather agency forecast temperatures above 104 degrees Fahrenheit.
Carlson, Silva and Leicester write for the Associated Press. Leicester reported from Paris. Associated Press writer Joseph Wilson in Barcelona contributed.
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