A rapidly spreading wildfire forced the complete evacuation of France’s Cap Ferret peninsula on Friday, with more than 400 residents and vacationers escaping the blaze via a fleet of civilian and official boats. The evacuation order came as the inferno, burning just kilometers from one of France’s most famous Bordeaux wine regions, expanded to cover more than 8,000 hectares — an area roughly one and a half times the size of Manhattan. The Cap Ferret wildfire is not an isolated disaster: it is one of multiple active blazes burning across the country amid the peak summer vacation season, which has drawn thousands of tourists to the southwestern Atlantic coast. In response to the spreading flames, authorities have already ordered thousands more visitors to evacuate coastal campsites and seasonal holiday homes, as hundreds of firefighters backed by water-bombing aircraft work around the clock to contain the fire lines. As the crisis escalates beyond the capacity of national response resources, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that Paris has activated the European Union’s civil protection mechanism to request additional firefighting support from neighboring member states. Macron warned that the wildfire situation across the country remains “very intense”, with little sign of relief in the coming days. Data from the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) confirms that 2024 is already shaping up to be one of the worst years for wildfire activity on the continent: the total area of burned vegetation across EU countries is already the second largest recorded since systematic satellite tracking began. The unfolding disaster comes as southern Europe continues to face record-breaking summer heat waves and drought conditions, which have created tinder-dry conditions across forests and shrublands, increasing the risk of uncontrolled wildfire spread.