French president pledges support on visit to fire zone

French president Emmanuel Macron has urged fire crews to “stay strong” as they battled to bring a monster wildfire under control, warning that the fight will take time.

On a visit to a co-ordination centre for the massive firefighting effort in south-west France, Mr Macron heard how the blaze raging since last week has been wildly unpredictable, transforming at times into a self-feeding fire storm as it burned through an area four times the size of Paris and forced 220,000 people to flee their homes.

“We’re facing a completely unprecedented fire,” Mr Macron said, describing the situation as France’s worst fire-related crisis since the Second World War.

He praised firefighting teams who stopped the inferno’s progression on Monday after successive days of spreading flames. But with woodlands still smouldering, he cautioned that the battle is not yet won.

“The weeks ahead will be hard,” he said.

With thousands of firefighters on the ground and rotations of water and retardant-dropping aircraft, it became a race against time before an expected heat wave that could make fighting flames more difficult.

The national weather service forecast temperatures above 35C in the south west on Tuesday and likely higher on Wednesday.

Regional authorities said the situation overnight to Monday had remained “globally stable” — a change from previous days when officials said flames had crept to within 10 miles of the outskirts of Bordeaux, a historic city of 268,000 people, and generated self-feeding firestorms with lightning bolts that ignited more blazes.

No new evacuations were announced on Monday. But with France about to enter its peak August tourist season, authorities for the Gironde region around Bordeaux worked to keep holidaymakers away, banning holiday camps for children and for people with disabilities.

Crews using earth movers tore up strips of forest and scrubland to create barren spaces, intended to stop fires from spreading. Farmers were keeping fire crews supplied with water, transporting it to them in tanks.

Around a dozen countries have provided planes, helicopters, firefighters and other assistance to both France and Spain, which is also fighting unprecedented blazes.

All told, fires in the two countries have forced more than 330,000 people to flee.

In Spain, wildfires have burned out of control around Madrid and in the Valencia region. Authorities evacuated 79,000 people and confined 30,000 others to their homes.

In both Spain and France, the exceptional scale of the fires — fuelled by heat waves that hit especially hard and early this year, making forests and scrubland tinder-dry — are driving calls for stronger action against climate change.

“What we are experiencing is not a series of isolated incidents. It is the consequence of a climate emergency that is making wildfires even more violent, heat waves more frequent,” Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez said.

A fire raging in hilly, rural terrain in Avila, west of Madrid, has become Spain’s largest on record, scorching 193 square miles, the government said. That is five times the size of Barcelona.

“Look at how the valley is burned. Look at the houses, the people,” said David Gonzalez, a 48-year-old gardener who used his van to run supplies to firefighters in Avila.

“We are feeling lot of anger and helplessness. It’s something inhuman,” he said.

Fires have burned 590 square miles this year in Spain — six times the area scorched by blazes in the first half of 2025, said Sara Aagesen, the ecology minister.

The minister said that another heat wave forecast from Tuesday — which would be Spain’s fourth so far this year — could ratchet up the fire danger. Spain’s weather agency forecast temperatures above 40C.

A wildfire driven by strong winds broke out on Sunday afternoon near Peschici, in Italy’s southern Puglia region, burning pine forest and scrub and forcing the evacuation of about 300 tourists from beaches and campgrounds, authorities said.

The Coast Guard evacuated tourists by sea to nearby Vieste, where authorities opened temporary shelters.

Three Canadair water-bombing planes and fire crews on the ground continued Monday to battle the blaze, which revived memories of devastating wildfires that hit the same coastal area in 2007.