Wildfires overwhelm exhausted firefighters in France and Spain

NEW FIRE IN SPAIN

The wildfire has forced nearby peak-season holiday spots along the Atlantic coast to be evacuated, and the swath of land reduced to cinders is equivalent to four times the area of Paris. Houses in the village of Le Porge, near the ocean, were gutted, AFPTV aerial images showed.

Another wildfire in the adjoining Landes region that had forced 30,000 evacuations was being “better contained – but not yet stopped”, the local prefecture said.

Struggling firefighters were being challenged by “turbulent winds”, a prefecture spokeswoman told AFP.

In Spain, authorities said that winds were pushing wildfires near Madrid to the south, away from the capital for now, but forcing more evacuations of villages in their path.

Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said late on Saturday that wind speed – forecast to subside – would be crucial to how the firefighting went on Sunday. So far, “weather conditions have been extremely difficult”, he said.

But a new fire front opened up hundreds of kilometres away, in eastern Spain near the Mediterranean city of Valencia.

At least 15,000 people were evacuated there, adding to the tally of 60,000 who had fled the fires near Madrid.

“The fire is beyond our capacity to extinguish,” Juanfran Perez Llorca, Valencia’s regional president, told reporters late Saturday.