As reported by officials, the fire in Le Porge has destroyed 2,000 hectares of forest since Wednesday – an area approximately three times the size of Gibraltar.
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In total, nearly 12,000 people, including tourists and hundreds of residents from surrounding villages, were forced to evacuate from the area overnight, authorities said.
On Thursday morning, the sky above the coastal village of Le Porge, near the city of Bordeaux, turned orange.
Hundreds of firefighters battled the blaze. The fire started around noon on Wednesday and quickly spread through dense pine forest, with flames reaching heights of 10 meters in some places.
“At noon, we saw a huge cloud of black smoke in the sky,” Julie Leonard, a holidaymaker from Bordeaux, told AFP news agency on Wednesday.
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Le Porge mayor Martial Zaninetti stated that the fire was likely caused by a brush clearing machine.
Police officials reported that they are investigating the accident version.
Since May, France has been hit by three heatwaves, which are part of increasingly frequent extreme weather conditions linked to climate change. This leads to higher mortality, drying rivers, and forest fires.
Last week, a fire also broke out in the UNESCO-protected Fontainebleau forest near Paris, destroying 2,000 hectares of forest – a rare occurrence in such a northern part of the country.
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