In Bordeaux as the wildfires close in

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:09Angelique Chrisafis:Today, what next after the biggest peacetime evacuation in French history?

0:19Today in Focus is supported by Paramount+. This isn't the end of a fight, it's the start of one. Lioness, the critically acclaimed original series from Taylor Sheridan, returns August 2nd only on Paramount+. In the new season, hidden networks, foreign operatives and personal betrayals collide. Meanwhile, Jo walks the line between duty and family as unseen forces circle her world, leaving her to reckon with a war that now reaches into every part of her life. Don't miss the new season of Lioness, starring Zoe Saldana and Michael Kelly, with Morgan Freeman and Nicole Kidman. Streaming August 2nd, only on Paramount+.

1:14There was a very strong smell of burning in the air. the sunlight that was coming through this cloud of smoke was giving everything a very orange, golden tint, making everything look very dystopian.

1:30Angelique Chrisafis:Over the past six days, huge wildfires have raged through southern France. President Emmanuel Macron has called it perhaps the most severe crisis his country has faced since World War II. The worst affected region is around Bordeaux in the southwest. That's where William, a student, described the skies above Arcachon, a coastal resort famous for its enormous sand dunes. There were even ashes falling from the sky. And in the evening, after dark, from the seafront, you could see the flames on the other side of the Arcachon Bay. That was a very hellish sight because the whole horizon was lit up with fire.

2:11and it really was like looking at the gates of Mordor in Lord of the Rings.

2:18Angelique Chrisafis:People living more than 100 miles away were feeling its effects as the wind blew inland. I was woken up in the middle of the night, very early hours of Saturday morning, because I was coughing. It had been very hot, so the windows were all open and I just couldn't breathe. And then I realised when it was light, about 7 o 'clock, that the sky was a very strange colour. This is Maria Louise, an Englishwoman who's been living in the Terre Haute region of Torrance for 20 years. I realised the fire was different to recent fires because it was so far from me over two hours. It seemed a long way from me, and yet it was impossible to breathe here, and my eyes were running and I was coughing non-stop.

3:07Angelique Chrisafis:Over in Trevelac in the south of France, Antoine, a winemaker, has been battling to save his vines. These were perfect conditions for what was to come. The fire just exploded. It just started everywhere on the plateau. We are taking position on hills just a bit higher than the farm so we could also warn our friends about incoming flames and we could see what was happening. During that day the whole plateau was scorched. During that fire we lost about six and a half hectares of our eight hectares of vines and most of them will never recover. It means that we probably will never replant those vines that were lost and it's a terrible thing because some of them were over 15 years old.

4:14You also have a sentimental attachment to vines because they were planted by the prior generation and we put a lot of work into growing them, maintaining them, harvesting them, making sure they are healthy, the grounds is rich enough and so on and so on.

4:47Angelique Chrisafis:Many people worry that this is just the start of what could become a new and terrifying normal What have I seen the changes and things since the first time I arrived here in 2002 When I was here originally, it was mainly high 20s, maybe mid 30s occasionally. But now this year, I've had 35, 36 degrees at night in my house and 40, 42 during the day. So it really has got a lot, lot hotter. And I don't believe it's a natural thing. I believe that it's due to people and our lifestyle and obviously the global warming that we are creating. As fires spread across Europe to Italy, Greece and Turkey, is this what summers are going to look like now?

5:38Angelique Chrisafis:From The Guardian, I'm Helen Pitt. Today in Focus, meet France's climate change evacuees.

5:50Angelique Chrisafis:Anjali Christophis, you've been our Paris correspondent for about 20 years, is that right? A long time. Yeah. Have you ever seen anything like this in all your time in France? No, this is an exceptional fire for many reasons. First of all, the scope of it, but also the actual nature of the fire itself. It's a form of fire cloud, which we've never seen in France before.

6:15A state of emergency in Western Europe was described as apocalyptic fire. This is the most highest risk we have never, never, never seen in France. Does it scare? It will be the fire of the century. It's already burnt an area about four times the size of Paris in southwestern France, and it's proving very difficult to contain because we're in heatwave conditions now, and those are also record temperatures. Yeah.

6:40Angelique Chrisafis:And you decamped to Bordeaux earlier this week, a city that many people will associate with its wine. You were heading there just as many people were trying to get the hell out of there. What was it like? First of all, you have to imagine where this fire is. So on the southwestern Atlantic coast of France, southwest of Bordeaux is an area in the Gironde, which is this beautiful, dense pine forest. This is a man-made forest from the mid-19th century, which was really increased in size under Napoleon III with this idea of planting pine trees in the area. People might know it if they've been on holiday in the area.

7:15You've got a lot of French celebrities that go. and this fire really began in that southwestern forested area and what was different about it was that it spread very very fast and it came within 15 kilometers of the outer edge of the outer suburbs of Bordeaux. The morning I arrived in Bordeaux everyone was watching it on the news, everyone was talking about it, lots of people were volunteering to help evacuees so there was this contrast between this beautiful capital of the wine region and this idea that fire was burning 30 kilometres away in a very erratic and uncontrolled way. So in the town itself, the main mood was this idea of solidarity, of how can we help?

7:59Who can we help? Because it was the biggest evacuation operation in France in many, many years. It was one of the biggest evacuation operations since the Second World War. And there were 220 ,000 people who had to evacuate their homes, including tourists as well, in the area of Gironde. And many of those people were flocking up to Bordeaux. So there was a mood of a sense of emergency. And where did you go when you arrived in Bordeaux.

8:34So I went straight up to the Bordeaux Exhibition Centre, which is this great sort of trade fair hall, massive hangars on the northern edge of the city. I'm in a vast hangar space at Bordeaux Exhibition Centre. There are rows of camp beds as far as the eye can see. There are lots of Dogs under the camp beds, on the camp beds, under tables. There's a vets area with lots of cats in travel cases. There are children playing volleyball on mats and quite a few people trying to get a bit of sleep. Many of the people I saw were the people who had evacuated homes more in suburban areas, small towns and villages west of Bordor.

9:19And they'd been sleeping for days there and they didn't know when they're going to be able to go home.

9:23Angelique Chrisafis:Can you tell us about some of the people that you met there and what they told you? One of the people I spoke to was called Florence and she used to work as a school assistant and she lived in a small town on the outskirts of Bordeaux and she'd had to evacuate. And she was sitting on the side of a camp bed that she'd just arrived at, thirsty, tired, extremely stressed, with two cats beside her, one on each side, in little cat carrying cases. And she said, you know, I wasn't leaving without my cats. I'm thirsty. They're thirsty. and I don't know what to do, and I struggle in this massive hangar with hundreds of people around me.

9:59I don't feel comfortable. And she said she was really, really scared and in an extreme state of stress. And she said to me, this felt like a disaster movie. And she said, I've always loved disaster movies, but now I feel like I've actually been in a disaster movie. I never want to see another disaster movie again.

10:16Angelique Chrisafis:And you wrote, it's always quite a beautiful piece, actually, a dispatch from this conference centre. You met a chap, am I pronouncing this correctly, Lloyd? Loïc. Tell us about Loïc.

10:31So Loïc was really interesting. So he's 66. He was a widower. And he said on a Friday night, he had sat down and watched the news and then gone to bed. And he had switched his phone off. And then at one in the morning, there was this pounding on his front door. And it was his neighbour, who was a firefighter, who said, you've got to leave, got to leave now.

11:00So he picked up his wallet and he picked up his car keys. He went outside. His car was covered in ash. So he had to use the windscreen wipers to try and clear the windscreen.

11:19Loic was talking in very poetic terms about what he described as a kind of apocalyptic skyscape. He said, I'd been watching this strange fog in the sky. It was a darkness, almost like an eclipse. And he said there was a kind of ochre mist as light from the sun was diffused through falling ash. and he said so much ash was falling that my car was turning completely grey. Wow, I can really visualise that scene as well as being sort of poetic and beautiful. It's terrifying, isn't it? Goodness. It is and he just drove and if you can imagine this convoy of cars with tens of thousands of people leaving different towns all heading towards Baldo and it was chock-a-block and he said, you know, I'm going to pull over and go to sleep in my car.

12:02So he pulled over, went to sleep in his car, woke up the next morning, no phone, put on the car radio for news and realised he couldn't go back. Because many of these people thought they were just going for an hour or so or for a night and they could come straight back. And he didn't know what to do. So he said, well, it would be safe to go into the centre of Bordeaux and go to the cinema. So he arrived early in the morning and just booked tickets for whatever he could see, which was the two-part Charles de Gaulle epic. He said he watched the second part first, the wrong way round, but he said, it's OK, I knew the story.

12:31Of course, everyone knows the story. And then he watched The Odyssey. So he comes out about midnight, goes back to sleep in his car. And he said he'd been eating pain au chocolat, chocolatine as it's called in the area, chocolatine. And when I saw him, he said, you know, I haven't shaved, I haven't changed. And then he didn't know what to do. So the following day, he went to his wife's grave, which is more in the metropolitan area of Bordeaux. And then he was sort of coming towards the exhibition centre when I was because he was then deciding what he should do next. he really felt at a loss because the authorities have said you know you cannot go back this is such an unpredictable fire and that's what's new here that even people returning to houses in the suburbs which have got no risk of catching fire at the moment even those people can't go back just in case and what I also found was really interesting when I met a couple who were from Afghanistan who were very well settled in southwestern France a very well integrated family who work as interpreters at quite a high level.

13:30It was like a very big cloud, but it wasn't the cloud. It was just the smoke that covered the sun. It was not something natural, like a cloudy weather. We were waiting for rain. And, of course, a fire in the sky that's turning the sky dark above your head in the middle of the day, where you think it's going to rain and you realise, no, it's the sun being blocked by smoke. sparked their memories of war in Afghanistan. For me, when I saw the smoke, I thought to myself that there was a big explosion in the airport because it was near to the airport. They live not that far from Bodo Airport at Merignac and they could breathe it.

14:15They felt it in their lungs. We couldn't breathe very easily. Krishma and Nasir described this acrid burning smell that they first thought was burning rubber. At first, I thought that there is something like rubber that is burning. But when we opened the windows, we feel that it's the smell of the wood. And then they realised it was unmistakably wood smoke. From all the pine trees? Yes, blowing across to the area where they live on the wind. And when they were asked to evacuate, they actually thought, yeah, we are brilliant, let's go. And they packed their toothbrush. They put their kids in the car who were 10 and 8.

14:59A couple of toys. And also neighbours and friends. Not everyone has a car. Not everyone could travel. So their car was packed by the time they left. And there they were three days with their children in this hangar. And that's actually where lots of children from low-income families are still there. Because, of course, climate inequality is rife. If you have more money, maybe you can go to your sister's holiday home. Maybe you can go somewhere else in France. But if you can't, you can't. You're stuck in the hangar.

15:42Angelique Chrisafis:And the people that you spoke to in Bordeaux, what were they saying about how the authorities both have responded and how well prepared the authorities were for a fire on this scale? I think in Bordeaux, everyone is extremely supportive of the fire services and fire offices as individuals. People are wanting to provide food. People who can get near the areas are trying to drive food trucks with roast chickens and things to give food to the fire offices. And especially farmers in the area are wanting to help with their big trucks that can transport large volumes of water. So there's a great, on a human level, a great sense of solidarity with the fire services.

16:18That is for sure. there's an element of inequality in terms of who is affected and who's not affected and of course there have been over 240 houses destroyed in some villages and some people are saying did our houses get destroyed in order to save other areas of the country you know were there enough people down here fighting for us do the authorities care enough and those are questions without really answers at the moment but fundamentally the fire services and there've been over 90 injuries fire services and the fire services themselves have been saying do we have enough proper respiratory protection that's required for this type of work you know they've been taking their own risks and many have had to be evacuated because they were injured and what

17:01Angelique Chrisafis:about civilian injuries have any people died or been hurt by these fires no and that is what the fire service yes that's what the fire service and the government are highlighting and part of the reason for these huge evacuations from areas that are bordering the fire area, suburban areas which wouldn't normally be evacuated in this type of wildfire in a forest. The prefect is very, very serious about making sure that's happening to try and avoid deaths. One of the biggest issues of this fire is the toxic smoke with fine particles which is blowing across France and there's a very poor air quality in the region where the fire is which is a very big region but that smoke is also blowing across France on the wind.

17:42And depending on how the wind blows, people in areas even in central France towards eastern France have warned that they can smell smoke and have called into the fire service saying, is there a fire? The French Prime Minister's office has made sure that they have been sent millions now of FFP2 masks. The French government is rushing 2.5 million masks to the department of Gironde to help protect against smoke full of toxic fine particulate matter. Calls to emergency service lines are mounting, especially for respiratory difficulties. Many people are wearing those on days where you can really smell the smoke.

18:16And even if you can't actually smell burning smoke, I felt it. And people said as well to me in Boulder, you can sort of sense your lungs are working in a different way. Certainly the government health authorities in that area have said if you're vulnerable, and that means if you're in your later years pregnant, you should be inside with the windows closed.

18:47Angelique Chrisafis:And obviously these fires are not just affecting France, but Spain too, other parts of Europe, including the UK. There were 300 wildfires reported in England and Wales just in the first two weeks of July. In the Peak District near where I live, there's been a fire that's been raging for weeks now. In fact, you can probably hear it in my voice. I'm blaming some of my sore throat on the smoke that has been enveloping this or greater Manchester region. Do we know why fires this year seem to be so much worse than any that many of us can remember? Well, the French government has said that we had a very wet winter and that winter created this growth of foliage in forested areas.

19:27And now, of course, we're in a moment of extreme dryness. And so when you have these hot, windy and dry conditions with a lot of foliage that's very dry and hasn't been cleared. This has been fodder for this fire. We know that Western Europe certainly is having an exceptional heat wave and that these temperatures are contributing to these increasing wildfires. So in Spain, for example, it's the first time the government has declared a national emergency for wildfires. From the ground and from the air, the vistas are equally terrifying. Fires across a huge area west of Madrid have triggered Spain's first ever wildfire national emergency.

20:09Many people have been evacuated. I think up to 80 ,000 people have been evacuated, another 30 ,000 having to stay in their homes. And there was a fire in the kind of hilly terrain west of Madrid, which has become Spain's largest fire on record. And if you step back and go back a few decades, those wildfires in Spain and Portugal were a known risk, as it were. These were fires that authorities were used to having to deal with and it's spreading north. And we've had very serious fires in the same area of the Gironde in the past, even four years ago in France. But fires are now spreading all across the north of France and it creates the issue whereby resources, fire officers, water bombing planes could always be sent from the north of France or other European countries.

20:52But if we have fires burning on all fronts and spreading north, there is the issue of how is it possible to contain them?

20:59Angelique Chrisafis:And we've been hearing too about how this fire is so unpredictable and that it might even have generated its own thunderstorm. I know you're not a meteorologist, but can you explain how that works? Yes, I'm going to have to attempt this word, pyrocumulunimbus, which is the official word for it. I'm not an expert, but to explain it briefly from other scientists who have explained it to my climate colleagues. These are very severe wildfires that can generate their own unique weather systems. so they have these form of fire clouds or fire generated thunderstorms which are the most severe form of fire clouds and it means that they can self-sustain themselves and they can change direction and it's very intense it's extremely unpredictable that is what's new about this fire so we're talking about this fire rising very high up into the sky and almost raining down in different areas and the firefighters in france said this meant it was extremely hard to contain the fire.

21:56It was almost as if the fire had its own life.