Disappointment and fear as tens of thousands of people evacuate French wildfires

BORDEAUX, July 25 - When raging wildfires threatened Mohammed Laabar's hometown in southwestern France on Friday, he and his wife gathered their three-year-old son, grabbed a pre-prepared survival kit and fled to nearby Bordeaux.

Within hours, however, the winds shifted, carrying smoke and fumes from the fires into Bordeaux.

For Laabar, a 35-year-old truck driver who lives in the town of Salaunes, the apocalyptic scenes that have come to define France's scorching summer of 2026 offered a sobering glimpse of the years ahead.

"We'll see this more often in the future, that's for sure,” he told Reuters at a makeshift evacuation centre in Bordeaux, where hundreds spent the night on Friday.

Authorities have evacuated 197,000 people from southwestern France so far after fires encircled the Atlantic coast peninsula of Cap Ferret, a major tourist destination at the height of the summer season.

French President Emmanuel Macron has enlisted the military to support exhausted firefighters battling a catastrophic tapestry of fires across the country, following a record-breaking heatwave that resulted in nearly 6,000 excess deaths.

Among those gathered at the evacuation centre in Bordeaux on Friday, there was disbelief, disappointment and fear for the future, as people waited, uncertain for how long they would remain stuck in the refuge.

Sitting with her husband and two grandsons, 71-year-old Bernadette fretted about her house in Lège-Cap-Ferret, which she evacuated in the middle of the night on Wednesday with "very little time to leave".

"I left without any of my things, with nothing, with the two little children", she said. "I forgot plenty of things, my eye medications, everything”.

Her home is in an area where firefighters have battled to save houses and buildings from the flames.

Bernadette, who declined to give her surname, said she had moved two more times as the fires spread, and had barely slept.

"I was at Lège, after that Andernos, and after that Bordeaux. And then now there's fire here too," she said, referring to the smoke which could be seen and felt in Bordeaux. "I'm going to scream."

"ASHES FALLING DOWN EVERYWHERE"

The Cap Ferret fire moved inland on Saturday, reaching an area about 30 km (19 miles) from Bordeaux. French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said the situation was calmer on Saturday although winds were expected to pick up again during the afternoon.

Among the tourists forced to abandon their holidays was 37-year-old Henri Sauter from Germany who had been in Cap Ferret with his extended family of nine adults, five children and a dog.

"There were ashes in our drink while we were having dinner, so it was a very weird feeling," he said.

He said the family hit heavy traffic after abandoning their rental on Friday when they received a text message ordering them to leave. He said they saw flames 300 metres away as they slowly exited along the one road in and out of the peninsula.

FIRES BECOMING BIGGER, MORE FREQUENT

Across Europe, three successive heatwaves this season helped wildfires scorch more land already this year than the annual average of the past two decades.

Many people sheltering at the evacuation centre said they feared the wildfire threat was worsening.

Retired computer engineer Jean-Pierre, 68, from Andernos said he had lived in the region for most of his life, but this was the first time he had to be evacuated.

Fires occurred from time to time when he was young, he said, but they were unusual. Over the past eight or nine years, they had become far more frequent, with multiple blazes often burning simultaneously.

"It's catastrophic," he said. REUTERS