LEGE-CAP FERRET, FRANCE: The final stage of the Tour de France is being cut by a third in length on Sunday to divert officers fighting wildfires in the southwest of the country.
The Paris police department said in a statement on Saturday that the riders will race within Paris, instead of starting from Thoiry, west of the capital, on a circuit of 89 kilometers (55 miles), out of the 133 kilometers (82.5 miles) route that was planned.
The statement said part of the security deployment planned for the 21st and final stage of the three-week race will “reinforce response efforts in areas affected by the fires”.
As reported earlier, France was preparing to use a specially adapted massive cargo plane to drop flame retardants on Saturday on a wildfire that has forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of people, including from several suburbs of the wine region city of Bordeaux.
Including about 70,000 people evacuated in central Spain, wildfires in southern Europe this week have displaced more than 250,000 people.
French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said the giant A400M jet would join 18 other jets and helicopters dropping water and retardant, waging an expected “long and very difficult” battle against the blaze raging in southwestern France’s Gironde region.
With winds expected to shift from west to east Saturday afternoon, potentially pushing the fire closer to Bordeaux, fire crews and authorities were digging trenches, using retardant and taking other steps to contain it, Nunez said. He said the fire was about 30 kilometers (20 miles) west of the city and had lost some of its intensity overnight.
The government mobilized soldiers to join the battle and was rushing 1.5 million face masks to protect against the choking smoke.
Authorities ordered people between the fire and Bordeaux to evacuate, including from parts of the city’s western suburbs and other towns and villages.
Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu described the fires as unprecedented and said the Gironde fire had become so intense on Friday that it had begun to produce its own winds.
“Our priority is clear: protecting human lives,” he posted on X, adding that evacuation orders “must be respected without delay.”
He said firefighting teams were being reinforced on Saturday by the addition of hundreds of soldiers and that breathing masks to filter smoke particles were being rushed to the Gironde region for those exposed to the potentially harmful smoke clouds.
The A400M is a heavy addition to the war
The French military transport aircraft converted for a firefighting role introduces a new heavyweight to the battle. In tests, it held and dropped 20 tons of water, about three times the capacity of Canadair water bombers.
The virulence of the French and Spanish fires, fueled by high temperatures and the long-term effects of climate change, caught fire crews and authorities on alert. Firefighters in Spain said the flames spread so quickly and violently that they could not be fought head-on. In France, some people even fled by boat as flames engulfed tourist towns on the Atlantic coast.
“We’ve never seen anything like this,” said Javier Organista, a resident of El Tiemblo, west of Madrid, where the fire burned a famous chestnut grove.
“When we saw the flames entering our town, surrounding us, leaving us practically no way out, all the neighbors joined in the effort to stop its progress.”
“It’s really sad,” he said.
Climate change is a supercharger
Spain deployed 2,600 firefighters, police and other emergency personnel to the two blazes west of Madrid, supported by 19 jets and water-dropping helicopters.
France deployed 1,300 firefighters to the Gironde fire and another further south in the Landes region. Dozens of firefighters were injured, authorities said, but no deaths were reported at either site, despite scenes of panic as townspeople fled in cars and police went door-to-door to tell people to leave as smoke darkened the skies.
Back-to-back heatwaves that hit unusually early and hard this year, baking Europe with record-breaking high temperatures, have turned forests and scrubland into lightboxes.
Fires have burned 130,000 hectares of forest already this year in Spain, up from an annual average of 100,000 hectares over the past decade, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said Saturday as he visited a command post west of Madrid.
He said more favorable weather on Saturday provided “a window of opportunity” for fire crews to bring the blaze under control. Madrid’s regional government said the fires decreased in intensity as winds and temperatures dropped.
Other European nations were helping, with Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, Portugal, Croatia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia already offering or expected to deploy planes and helicopters to drop water on the Spanish and French fire fronts.
The fire headed towards Bordeaux
Gironde region prefect Sophie Brocas said on Friday night that strong westerly winds were pushing the fire closer to the Bordeaux metropolitan area and that it had grown to “unprecedented proportions”. Bordeaux’s western suburbs covered by evacuation orders included Le Haillan and parts of Eysines and Mérignac, where the city’s airport is located. The airport said it remained open but that its bus and tram services had been suspended.
The Gironde fire broke out on Wednesday near the Cap Ferret peninsula on France’s Atlantic coast, 60 kilometers (37 miles) from Bordeaux. Bordeaux authorities took in thousands of evacuees, offering them food and shelter in an exhibition centre, and the city’s mayor said it could be equipped to welcome up to 10,000 people if needed.
Evacuation orders were sent with special alerts on cellphones, instructing people to leave, Brocas said.
“We want everyone to be brought to safety quickly. We have to act quickly together,” she said.
