Bordeaux wildfire smoke has left residents and visitors in southwestern France anxious as flames burn just 15km from the city’s outskirts. Locals told the BBC that a thick haze has spread across Bordeaux, with some people struggling to breathe and others wearing masks to get through the day.
One resident, Pierre Pourquery, said the city feels fearful as smoke drifts in from the fire zone. Another man, who plans to leave Bordeaux on Tuesday, said the scene looked like something out of a terrible film after the city was engulfed in smoke. Chris De Abreu, who works in France and has a flat in Bordeaux, said the weekend brought an orange tint to the sky as the sun disappeared behind the smoke, and that many people are worried about what comes next.
The Bordeaux wildfire smoke is part of a wider crisis that has spread across France and Spain, where emergency crews are trying to contain blazes that have burned tens of thousands of hectares and forced more than 300,000 people to evacuate. In Biscarrosse Plage, about 63km from Bordeaux, Rachel Hanberry said her beachfront home sits next to the town’s evacuation point, and that people arrived on Thursday night with nowhere else to go. She said the community has lost a great deal and described the stress and trauma as immense.
Farther south-east, Jo Barnes and her family returned to their home in Cotignac after evacuating for four days when a fire moved quickly toward their property. She said a wall of orange flames came over the hill and came within 10 metres of the back of the house, close to a gas tank on the property. The family home was left standing, and the town was not damaged, but the hillside around it was blackened and charred.
