Firefighters are trying to control the flames approaching Bordeaux, located in the heart of the world-renowned winemaking region, and officials have already evacuated thousands of people from nearby villages.
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“We are very vigilant,” said Bordeaux Mayor Thomas Cazenave, adding that there are currently no plans to evacuate the city’s 270,000 residents.
“The fire is further south,” he told reporters at a shelter for those displaced by the wildfires.
“It is still on the outskirts of the metropolitan area, but it is not approaching the western side of the metropolis,” he stated.
The mayor estimated that the flames are raging 25–30 kilometers from the city itself and about 15 kilometers from the metropolitan area, near the town of Martignas-sur-Jalle.
This town of 8,000 inhabitants, located on the far western edge of the metropolitan area, has already been evacuated.
The unpredictability of the fire complicates the work of rescuers.
“This is a fire that has no logic. It has no direction,” Guillaume Millet, a spokesman for the Gironde Fire and Rescue Service, told AFP news agency.
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“We cannot predict it,” he said.
Some people in the village of Le Barp, located about 30 kilometers south of Bordeaux, refused to evacuate, while others said they did not know where to go.
50-year-old former soldier Sebastien Piquet said he was “not very worried” for now.
“My wife and son have evacuated, but I am staying because I want to help my brother-in-law, who runs a dog shelter with 60 dogs, if they need to be evacuated,” he said.
The fire, believed to have started accidentally on Wednesday in the village of Saumos, has already destroyed about 42,000 hectares of forest and forced the evacuation of 220,000 people, making it one of the largest such operations in French history.
The city of Bordeaux was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2007, recognizing its “outstanding urban and architectural ensemble”.
