Month: July 2026

Wildfires remain active across the south-east of France this morning, with the blaze at Pontevès in the Var still not under control and seven Mediterranean departments placed on alert for a high fire risk, even as the country’s attention centres on the megafire threatening Bordeaux.

The Pontevès fire has now covered 4,500 hectares and is not yet contained, with all of the Var’s forest massifs closed to the public for the day and gusts of wind forecast throughout. The prefect of the Var, Simon Babre, said two Canadair water-bombers would join the effort, alongside four water-bombing helicopters — two of them heavy — supplied by Switzerland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia, which had already begun drops this morning.

Three deliberate fire-starts at Varages

Overnight, three deliberate fire-starts were reported in the commune of Varages, north-west of the Pontevès blaze, the prefecture and Captain Mario Aulino confirmed. “These three ignitions have nothing to do with the Pontevès incident,” Aulino said, stressing they were unconnected to the main fire.

Corsica and the Landes

In Haute-Corse, two significant fires are mobilising crews, one at Corte having burned 950 hectares and a second at Biguglia 150. In the Landes, the fire between Biscarrosse and Sanguinet has covered 3,600 hectares and destroyed 198 homes, but did not progress overnight after rain arrived, and the prefect described a calmer situation. A separate blaze in the Hautes-Alpes has left five firefighters lightly injured.

Seven departments on alert

Météo-France has placed seven Mediterranean departments — the Pyrénées-Orientales, Aude, Hérault, Gard, Vaucluse, Bouches-du-Rhône and Var — on orange alert for a fire risk judged ‘high’. For those on the Riviera and across the wider Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region, the immediate danger remains the tinder-dry conditions and the possibility of new outbreaks rather than the current fronts. Residents can track active fires in near real time on the public map at gisfire.saro.app.

See also: 

France battles historic megafire as flames near Bordeaux and 220,000 flee

Stay updated with Monaco Life: sign up for our free newsletter, listen to our podcasts on Spotify, and follow us across Facebook,  Instagram, LinkedIn, and Tik Tok. 

Main photo: the wildfires as seen from Brue-Auriac, credit: Thomas Delacoste

France is fighting a wildfire of unprecedented scale on the edge of Bordeaux this morning, with 42,000 hectares burned, around 220,000 people evacuated and firefighters conceding they are still not in control of a blaze the Gironde prefecture has classed as a ‘megafire’. President Emmanuel Macron convened an interministerial crisis cell at the interior ministry at 10am.

The fire, which broke out at Saumos last Wednesday, is the defining front of a wider emergency burning across five departments. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said 115,000 hectares have burned across France since the start of the season, with 30 to 40 fires being fought on any given day and more than 13,000 outbreaks recorded since January.

Readers can follow the active fires in near real time on the public tracking map at gisfire.saro.app.

‘We are still not masters of the fire’

Rain overnight and a drop in the wind bought crews time, but the Gironde fire service was blunt this morning about where things stand. “We can’t say the fire is stabilised. We’ve stabilised a situation that was completely unstable, but we’re still not masters of the fire,” said Captain Wilfried Schneider of the SDIS 33, adding that the most active front now lies between Marcheprime and Pierroton, at the gates of the Bordeaux metropolitan area.

The prefecture reported the fire had remained broadly stable through the night, without major change, though it “continues its progression”. On the Cap-Ferret peninsula the picture is more fragile. “Unfortunately the weather conditions are not favourable to allow this fire to be brought under control,” said Philippe de Gonneville, mayor of Lège-Cap-Ferret, describing forestry works under way to slow the flames’ advance south along the peninsula. “The coming hours will be decisive.”

Government spokeswoman Maud Bregeon sought to calm fears about the city itself, telling franceinfo that “the evacuation of Bordeaux is not on the agenda as things stand”, while describing an exceptional and unpredictable fire. The mayor of Bordeaux, Thomas Cazenave, said the flames had come within around 15 kilometres of the city, prompting the partial closure of a major motorway.

84 firefighters injured, no civilian casualties

The Gironde prefecture said 84 firefighters have been injured since the blaze began, nine of them in the latest 24-hour period. No civilian has been killed or injured by the Gironde fire, a point the fire service has held onto through days of exhausting work. “There were zero injuries among our fellow citizens,” said Éric Brocardi, spokesman for France’s firefighters, adding that crews were far from demoralised. “They have fire in their bellies.”

Some 2,500 firefighters are engaged in the Gironde alone, supported by 1,500 soldiers, 1,200 police and gendarmes and 18 aircraft. The lieutenant-colonel coordinating part of the response, David Annotel, warned the fight would be long. The fire, he said, “will last several weeks, even several months before we can give the final message of the fire being out.”

A village of the displaced in Bordeaux

The human scale of the evacuation is becoming visible in the city’s public buildings. Between 2,500 and 3,000 people are now gathered at the Bordeaux exhibition park, where thousands of camp beds have been laid out across the halls and volunteers distribute food and water. More than fifteen schools and boarding establishments have been opened across Nouvelle-Aquitaine to take in evacuees, among them care-home residents and children from summer camps.

The economic toll is already being counted. Economy Minister Roland Lescure said more than 13,000 businesses had been evacuated in the Gironde, calling it “an economic thunderclap” for a region that did not need one, and confirmed that insurers had agreed to cover rehousing costs for up to three weeks for those displaced.

A crisis felt across the border

The fires are part of a wider southern European emergency. Across France and Spain, more than 300,000 people have been forced from their homes, with Spain battling what officials in the Madrid region have called the worst fires in its history. France has activated the EU civil protection mechanism, drawing in water-bombing aircraft and firefighting teams from Croatia, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia and Romania.

Stay updated with Monaco Life: sign up for our free newsletter, listen to our podcasts on Spotify, and follow us across Facebook,  Instagram, LinkedIn, and Tik Tok. 

Main photo of Gironde, credit: Sandrine Ricard

Wildfires reignited overnight in the Var, with flames threatening homes at Correns and evacuation orders still in force across three communes, as Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur remains under extreme fire risk and a far larger disaster unfolds in the south-west of France, where two firefighters have been killed and more than 141,000 people forced from their homes.

The fire that began at Pontevès on Tuesday 21st July flared again during the night at Correns, on two separate fronts, one of them threatening houses to the north-west of the village. A fresh flare-up was also recorded at Pontevès itself. Since Tuesday, around 3,250 hectares have burned in the department. Ground crews worked through the night and four water-bombing helicopters were making drops on Saturday morning.

Evacuations still in place across the Var

Evacuation orders remained in force on Saturday for the communes of Correns, Châteauvert and the southern districts of Barjols. Residents of Pontevès and neighbouring communes have been temporarily banned from drinking tap water because of contamination risks, with bottled water being distributed instead. An investigation into the cause of the original fire is under way, with investigators examining whether it was started deliberately.

Some residents had been allowed to return earlier in the week after conditions briefly improved, only for strong Mistral winds to drive the flames forward again. Rain is forecast over the affected area later on Saturday, which the prefecture hopes will help crews on the ground.

Massifs closed, and a warning for the Alpes-Maritimes

Météo-France placed five departments — the Aude, Bouches-du-Rhône, Gard, Var and Vaucluse — on red alert for extreme fire risk this week, following weeks of drought, record heat and strong winds. In the Var, five major forest massifs — the Monts Toulonnais, the Corniche Varoise, the Maures, the Estérel and the Centre-Var — were closed to the public at the highest ‘very severe’ risk level.

The alert stretched into the Alpes-Maritimes, where much of the coastal fringe and the hinterland behind the Riviera was classed at the ‘severe’ level, with access to the massifs strongly discouraged. For Monaco and the wider Côte d’Azur, the immediate risk this weekend is less the flames themselves than the tinder-dry conditions and the possibility of dry thunderstorms sparking new blazes.

An ‘unprecedented’ fire nears Bordeaux

The gravest situation is unfolding some 700 kilometres to the west. Authorities began evacuating suburbs of Bordeaux on Saturday — Le Haillan, Eysines and Mérignac — as an enormous wildfire advanced on the city. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said the fires had reached a level never seen before, and President Emmanuel Macron ordered the military to mobilise.

The blaze, which broke out near Saumos in the Gironde on 22nd July, has burned through as much as 19,000 hectares of pine forest and forced tens of thousands from their homes across the Arcachon basin. The Nouvelle-Aquitaine prefecture described it as worse than the fires of 2022, warning that it moves unpredictably and can leap distances of up to a kilometre. On the Cap-Ferret peninsula, one of the region’s best-known holiday spots, a full evacuation was ordered by land and sea, with around 1,500 people leaving by boat.

Two firefighters were killed on Tuesday while tackling a blaze near Bordeaux-Mérignac airport. Macron has requested emergency assistance from the European Union, drawing in firefighting aircraft from Croatia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and other partners.

Four times the normal destruction

More than 42,800 hectares have burned across France since January, according to the European Forest Fire Information System, more than four times the average for this point in the year and surpassing the record set in 2022. Forecasters warn that more than 60,000 hectares could be lost if the current conditions persist through the summer.

The crisis extends across the border into Spain, where the government has declared a national emergency in the Madrid region and the province of Ávila, with around 60,000 people evacuated. The president of the Community of Madrid described the fire threatening the region as the worst in its history.

A brief respite is expected over the weekend, with storms forecast to lower temperatures and bring rain to parts of the south, easing the red alerts. Forecasters caution, however, that a fresh heatwave next week is likely to bring high fire risks back to the region.

Stay updated with Monaco Life: sign up for our free newsletter, listen to our podcasts on Spotify, and follow us across Facebook,  Instagram, LinkedIn, and Tik Tok.

Photo credit: Philippe Charpentier