Race against time to contain wildfires in France and Spain – The Latest
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is The Guardian.
We're entering the era of fires that we cannot extinguish. If you have a really wet winter followed by a very hot and dry summer, then you have huge, huge amounts of fuel that can be burned. Scientists talk about it turning forests into tinderboxes. When these little fires spark up, they can spread and morph into these gigantic blazes.
From The Guardian's Today In Focus, this is The Latest with me, Lucy Harth. Wildfires are raging across France and Spain.
How severe are the wildfires around Bordeaux and what areas are affected?
Ajit Naranjan, you're our Europe Environment Correspondent. You've been covering this for us. Let's start with France, where the situation is particularly grave in the area around Bordeaux. Give us a sense of the scale of the wildfires that we're seeing and the impact on the city.
Yeah, so France and Spain have both seen record-breaking numbers of wildfires for this time of year. Particularly striking is that in France, so far this year, more land has burned than the country's record for a full fire season. And we still have more than a month of the summer left to go. These big blazes, as you said, they're concentrated in the South West. with this fire that's creeping closer and closer to Bordeaux. It's already burned through houses just kind of 20 kilometers away from the city. And firefighters are struggling to get it under control. In Spain, meanwhile, we've got this situation where you've got multiple big blazes burning right across the country. And while the fire season in Spain isn't yet record-breaking compared to some of the previous horrific years we've seen,
It's already led to the evacuations across France and Spain, hundreds of thousands of people. And entire towns have been put under lockdown because the smoke is so bad.
Yeah, I mean, unbelievable images of the city of Bordeaux being sort of engulfed and people reporting how difficult it is to breathe and to walk outside in the city. And also those images of people in already evacuation centres that have been set up in town centres, schools, etc. to keep people safe with the number of evacuations.
How many people have been evacuated and what is the immediate human impact?
Exactly.
We know that French President Emmanuel Macron is holding an emergency meeting this morning because temperatures are set to soar again later this week. How would you describe the response from the French government so far?
So firefighters in both countries have sprung into action, but the scale of the blazers, both in terms of size and number, it has simply pushed them beyond their limits. I mean, this is an issue for firefighters across the world where when you've got one blaze, you know how to manage it. When you've got two or three blazers occurring simultaneously, then you're already being forced to divide your resources. And when it comes to these kind of mega blazers that are happening, then it reaches levels that are just very, very, very difficult to put out, particularly when the weather is so bad. There's been some critique internally in France about particularly one aspect of the lack of budget for fighting fires.
And so one of these particular issues is that only seven of these 12 Canadair firefighting planes were actually available to tackle the blaze on Saturday because the others were being repaired. The fleet itself is fairly old. It leads to things like France and Spain having to call on the EU and request extra firefighting support. And so in France, I think the EU's deployed seven planes and four helicopters. And these are coming from countries as far away as Sweden, which is obviously used to very, very different conditions in terms of firefighting than a country like France is. And as far away as Turkey, in Spain, the EU has mobilized six planes. And One small saving grace one scientist told me is that although the fire season in Spain and France is particularly bad, Portugal has escaped some of the kind of horrific stuff it's seen in previous years.
And so I think the EU says it's deployed 134 firefighters and 41 vehicles from Portugal.
So here in the UK, we've had record-breaking temperatures in May and June, well in excess of 35 degrees on certain particularly hot days.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:40
2
How severe are the wildfires around Bordeaux and what areas are affected?
0:40–2:19
3
How many people have been evacuated and what is the immediate human impact?
2:19–5:17
4
How have French and Spanish firefighting resources responded to the crisis?
5:17–12:09