France is urging visitors to keep their holidays on track even as ferocious wildfires tear through parts of the country’s southwest, forcing mass evacuations and stretching emergency crews across the region.
Éléonore Caroit, the minister for international partnerships, said the country was enduring an “exceptionally intense” fire season, but stressed that travellers should not abandon trips if they stay alert to local guidance.
The vast forest blazes have driven 200,000 people from their homes across south-western France and central Spain, with 141,000 evacuated from the Gironde and Landes departments in France alone.
Ms Caroit said the devastation had gone far beyond a routine emergency, describing it as a tragedy after nearly 50,000 hectares were burned this year. She said the toll was markedly worse than last year and even surpassed 2022, which had previously stood as France’s worst fire season.
Horses flee as wildfire closes in on Biscarrosse
Speaking on BBC Radio, she said large parts of France remained unaffected, noting that similar conditions were being seen in Spain and elsewhere. From Paris, where she said the situation was calm, she urged visitors to continue with their plans, adding that most regions were still operating normally.
She cautioned, however, that people should keep themselves informed about conditions wherever they are staying or travelling.
Ms Caroit said the French army had been brought in to support firefighting efforts as the number of active wildfires reached 32. She also said France’s ability to respond was being strengthened by its membership of the European Union.
She said the crisis showed why EU membership mattered, pointing to the activation of the European Civil Protection Mechanism and calling European solidarity essential at a moment of such strain.
A burned house and vehicle in Lanton, in the Lege-Cap-Ferret region of south-western France
She said France had received confirmation that two water-bombing carriers would come from Croatia, two water tractors from Portugal, and two Black Hawk helicopters from the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Those countries, she said, were assisting France as conditions worsened, just as France had helped them in previous emergencies — a practical example, she argued, of what it means to belong to the EU.
Ms Caroit also called on world leaders to treat the fires as a stark warning on climate change. The blazes have killed two firefighters, injured 42 others and are confirmed to have destroyed about 100 homes so far.
Read more:Tens of thousands evacuated as French, Spanish wildfires rage
She said the pattern was visible well beyond France, citing wildfires in California and Chile as further evidence of a changing climate and the damage human activity is causing.
She warned that while some leaders continue to downplay climate change, its consequences are already being felt in concrete and destructive ways across the world, making the issue impossible to ignore.
France, she said, has invested millions, but the scale of the current emergency shows that those efforts have not yet been enough.
