Bordeaux is holding its breath.
For several days, people living in and passing through the city have watched with mounting anxiety as a vast wildfire moved unpredictably in its direction.
By the weekend, the threat no longer felt distant. Changing winds pushed smoke and ash into Bordeaux, unsettling a city that would normally be in the full swing of its tourist season.
Just north of the city centre, Bordeaux’s main exhibition centre has been turned into a large-scale shelter for evacuees.
80-year-old recounts evacuation from French wildfire
Among those arriving are many older residents, now sleeping on temporary camp beds. Paula, 80, was told to leave her home in Saint-Médard-en-Jalles late on Friday night.
“You learn about life,” she said.
Paula said the order came through as a message on her phone: ‘It’s time to go. Please leave your house and go to the safe place.’
“To leave a house after midnight driving to the main road.
Paula said that she wants to “go back home as soon as possible”.
“But I would simply be able to sit in the garden, try to save my flowers, vegetables.”
A caged pet cat belonging to residents evacuated from the wildfires in the Gironde region in an emergency shelter set up in Bordeaux
Infographic showing the Bordeaux fires
“I have asthma… and it’s been complicated to breathe,” one 24-year-old restaurant worker said. “With the wind turning we have lots of smoke in the city. We work in a restaurant, so it’s not always easy.”
The fires have also left tourists weighing whether to stay or cut short their plans.
“We couldn’t sleep last night,” said a woman from Wisconsin who is visiting Bordeaux after a family wedding nearby.
“We were very worried, all of us. I was researching how to get out of here, possibly this morning, even to Paris.”
Cooler, damper conditions on Monday offered a brief reprieve, and by this morning only a faint trace of smoke remained in the air. But officials remain deeply alert to what may come next.
Another severe heatwave is taking shape across the region, with forecasters warning temperatures could climb to 40C degrees by midweek. The danger is sharpened by landscapes already left tinder dry after repeated heatwaves and scarce rainfall.
A firefighter runs along the road near the wildfire on the Camp de Souge military training ground, close to the town of Martignas-sur-Jalle, Gironde
A placard hanging on the wall of a house reading ‘Thank you’ as a message of gratitude to the firefighters in Biscarrosse, southwestern France
Since last Wednesday, 42,000 hectares of land have burned in the region – an area larger than the greater Dublin urban area – and 240 houses have been destroyed.
Concern is now focused on several Bordeaux suburbs, with the fire burning just 15km from the city’s outskirts.
The ferocity of the heat has helped generate a newly identified weather system in recent days: pyrocumulonimbus, or “fire clouds” – towering, fire-driven thunderstorms that can leave the area highly exposed to sudden flare-ups.
French President Emmanuel Macron visited the city yesterday, praising firefighters confronting what he called a “completely unprecedented wildfire” and describing the blazes as the “toughest since World War II”.
There was, however, one measure of relief: he said a smaller fire farther south in the Landes region had now been contained.
