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A sprawling wildfire tearing through southwestern France’s popular coastal region has forced one of the largest emergency evacuations in modern French history, leaving thousands of tourists and local residents taking refuge in a makeshift shelter at Bordeaux’s exhibition center.

The fast-moving blazes, which have stretched hundreds of firefighters to their limit over recent days, have cut through pine forests near the iconic Arcachon Bay — an area famous for its towering sand dunes, coastal oyster industry, and upscale vacation getaways like the Cap Ferret peninsula. As flames spread unexpectedly rapidly, authorities ordered the evacuation of tens of thousands of people from at-risk towns and villages, with most evacuees arriving at the Bordeaux shelter under cover of night.

Inside the converted exhibition hall, rows of camp beds stretch across the floor and stacks of donated food supplies line the walls, as displaced residents and stranded tourists work to regain their footing after a chaotic escape. Smoke still lingers in the air over Bordeaux, though conditions have improved from the previous evening, when thick acrid fumes blanketed the city; protective masks are available to any shelter resident who requests one. Even amid the upheaval, ordinary life carries on in small ways: children kick footballs and play badminton to pass the time, some evacuees bring their pets along (with pet food and litter provided by organizers), and elderly residents are transported to the shelter via chartered buses for safe access.

For many evacuees, the experience is unprecedented. Seventy-five-year-old Irish tourist Nuala Kelly, a world traveler who has encountered a wide range of unexpected situations during her journeys, called the wildfire crisis something she never expected to face. “It’s an experience, you know, I would be happy to do without it, but everybody’s been very kind here, very good, so we have to be thankful,” she told reporters from AFP at the shelter.

Thirty-eight-year-old Olivier Stewart, who fled the threatened town of Merignac with his wife and young children after receiving an emergency evacuation alert, said the youngest family members bear the brunt of the stress. “The children are the most stressed. They think the fire is going to burn down the house, but we’re coping,” he explained.

Seventy-year-old retiree Frederic Tavitian, who lives 50 kilometers from the fire zone, described plumes of smoke rising from the forest like an erupting volcano moments before he received his evacuation order. Traffic jams stretched his journey to the shelter to four hours, and he said he had been unable to sleep through the night due to constant noise from the crowded facility. “It’s really tough. That’s the way it is. We just have to live with it,” he said, sitting on his camp bed with a guitar he brought along for comfort.

Community support has poured in from across Bordeaux to support the evacuees. Local residents have opened their spare rooms to displaced families, while volunteer medical staff have set up an on-site first aid station to address immediate health needs, including monitoring for dehydration and checking in on vulnerable children and elderly residents. Fifty-five-year-old local engineer David Duval was one of the locals who stepped up to offer accommodation. “It breaks my heart when I see all these people in distress. We have to think about what each of us can do,” he explained. Nurse Marie Decroix, who is working the first aid station, walks between groups of families documenting needs and sharing public health guidance, providing critical support to people shaken by their sudden displacement.

Hundreds of firefighters remain on the front lines battling the blazes, as evacuees wait anxiously for updates on whether their homes and communities have survived the flames, and many vacationers have seen their summer getaways cut abruptly short by the crisis.

In a devastating outbreak of climate-fueled wildfires that has become one of the most extreme weather emergencies Western Europe has faced in modern history, more than 160,000 people have been displaced across France and Spain, with emergency crews stretched to breaking point and military forces deployed to battle the raging infernos.

The crisis unfolded over three days of relentless burning, with large blazes breaking out simultaneously near Bordeaux in southwestern France and on the outskirts of Madrid, Spain. By Saturday, the scale of displacement had reached staggering levels: 141,000 residents and tourists were evacuated from fire zones in France, while 25,000 more fled the Madrid region, with an additional 39,000 people ordered to shelter in place to avoid toxic smoke. The smoke from the Madrid wildfires drifted as far as the city’s center by early Saturday, a stark reminder of how close the disaster has come to one of Europe’s major capital cities.

The fires have been amplified by exceptionally dry conditions, created by a string of record-breaking heatwaves that have parched forests across the Iberian Peninsula and southern France since May. Climate scientists have repeatedly warned that rising global temperatures are increasing the frequency and severity of droughts and extreme weather events, creating the tinder-dry conditions that allow wildfires to grow rapidly out of control.

In France, officials have described the Bordeaux-region blaze as the largest wildfire the nation has ever recorded. French President Emmanuel Macron ordered military intervention on Friday, and Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu later announced that 1,000 military personnel would be deployed to support overstretched firefighters who have been working around the clock to contain the flames. To date, the fire has destroyed more than 22,000 hectares of land – an area roughly twice the size of the city of Paris. Authorities also arranged for 1.5 million protective face masks to be delivered to the Gironde department to protect first responders and local residents from toxic smoke inhalation.

The blaze near Bordeaux poses an additional high-stakes risk: it is advancing toward the broader Bordeaux wine region, which is home to many of the world’s most famous and prestigious wineries. Among the hardest-hit evacuation zones is the upscale Cap Ferret peninsula, where 44,000 people fled, hundreds of them escaping by boat as flames closed in on coastal roads. So far, 40 firefighters have been injured battling the Cap Ferret blaze, part of a rising toll that has seen three firefighters killed in wildfires across France and Italy this week alone.

Tens of thousands of evacuees are now sheltering in emergency facilities set up in local schools, gymnasiums, and large public hangars, many unsure if their homes will still stand when they are allowed to return. Ninety-year-old Maria Lalanne, who evacuated from Lege Cap Ferret to a gym in Andernos, told reporters she had left her glasses and hearing aid behind in the rush to escape. Living with pre-existing heart disease and high blood pressure, she said she had no information about the fate of her home. “I don’t know how long all this will last. I don’t know how my house is, whether it has burnt,” she said.

Forty-nine-year-old Caroline Larrode, who fled her home in Saumos with her three cats, said she had nowhere else to go and ended up in a large Bordeaux hangar housing evacuees from the Arcachon Basin. “We had no one to put us up,” she explained.

In Spain, the situation remains equally critical. Two of the three large wildfires burning west of Madrid have already merged into a single massive blaze, which is just kilometers from merging into an even larger inferno on the capital’s doorstep. Carlos Novillo, the Madrid regional government’s environment chief, warned Friday that the fire was “at its peak and… currently beyond the capacity of firefighters to contain” the blaze. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez planned to visit the fire-ravaged region on Saturday to attend an emergency response meeting in the fire-stricken village of Cenicientos, followed by a press briefing to update the public on the response effort.

Luis, an audiovisual technician who grew up in a suburban town near the fire zone, had spent an afternoon helping evacuate residents from Pelayos de la Presa when he received his own evacuation order. “I cried at first because it’s where I grew up. But now, it’s more a feeling of anger and resignation, because there’s nothing we can do as long as we’re not allowed to go back and see what we’ll find there,” he told Agence France-Presse.

Francisco Martín, the Spanish central government’s delegate in Madrid, said a forecast dip in temperatures on Saturday offered a small window of opportunity for firefighters. “There is a real opportunity now to tackle this fire with some guarantee of success,” he said, though he warned that the day would still be challenging, with erratic, rising wind gusts expected through the morning.

Spain’s largest active wildfire, burning in Guadalajara province roughly 100 kilometers north of Madrid, has already scorched more than 32,000 hectares of land. Both France and Spain have formally requested assistance from the European Union to support their overwhelmed emergency response teams, as hundreds of firefighters on both sides of the border work to the point of exhaustion to contain the blazes.

One of France’s most beloved summer retreats, long a quiet favorite of A-list celebrities and wealthy families, has been reduced to a smoky disaster zone, forcing a massive coordinated evacuation of more than 35,000 residents and tourists as an out-of-control wildfire sweeps across the Cap Ferret peninsula.

Known for its windswept Atlantic sand dunes, casual oyster shacks and understated luxury that draws stars like Marion Cotillard and Jean Dujardin away from the glitzy bustle of the French Riviera, Cap Ferret is now a near-empty landscape. Deserted streets, shuttered storefronts and locked vacation homes mark the normally bustling peak summer tourist season, a transformation that long-term residents say is surreal.

The blaze ignited on Wednesday in the nearby village of Saumos, just kilometers from the world-famous Medoc wine region, before spreading rapidly through the dense pine forests that cover the Atlantic coast. By Thursday, it had jumped to the Cap Ferret peninsula, prompting regional authorities to order a full evacuation of the peninsula’s 40,000 seasonal and permanent residents.

Jean Goncalves, a 54-year-old resident of 30 years, fled his home early Friday after watching his neighbor’s wooden home go up in flames. “It’s a disaster, it’s horrible,” he told reporters from AFP, with a cloth tied over his face to block the acrid smoke. At the peninsula’s ferry terminal, local resident Cecile Maumy compared the empty streets to the height of the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns. “There’s not a soul around. It feels like the Covid period. It’s unbelievable,” she said.

While no fatalities have been reported as of Friday, the fire has already destroyed more than 50 residential structures and an entire seaside campsite. Regional prefect Sophie Brocas labeled the blaze an “XXL wildfire, unpredictable and voracious,” with locals describing the landscape as resembling a war zone.

The mass evacuation unfolded via two routes: most evacuees left by private car along the peninsula’s only connecting road, while hundreds of others were transported out by civilian and government ferries. This sea evacuation plan, drafted after devastating 2022 wildfires in the same region, was activated for the first time this week. Local shopkeeper and elected official David Lafforgue noted that the evacuation itself proceeded calmly, despite the chaos of the situation. “Everything was handled smoothly. Suitcases were ready, and people remained calm,” he said.

But Lafforgue warned of catastrophic long-term impacts for the local tourism-dependent economy. The peak summer tourist season runs from mid-July to mid-August, the most profitable month of the year for local businesses. “Economically, it’s catastrophic. We go from everything to nothing,” he said. “We don’t know whether our seasonal workers will come back or whether our customers will return.”

Many evacuees have been relocated to the larger coastal town of Andernos, where authorities are now preparing for a potential full evacuation of that town as well, as the fire continues to advance. Andernos deputy mayor Jean-Francois Garric explained that the town is already adjusting to the shifting danger. “We are welcoming people from the peninsula who have been evacuated to our reception centres, and now we have been instructed to evacuate those centres as well,” he said.

Ninety-year-old Maria Lalanne, a lifelong Cap Ferret resident with no immediate family who fled to Andernos, spoke of her disorientation after being forced to leave her home quickly. She accidentally left her hearing aids and glasses behind amid the rush to evacuate. “I have heart disease, blood pressure issues, eye problems. I don’t know how long this will last. I don’t know what has happened to my house,” she said.

For visiting tourist Julie Boisvert, who was staying in the nearby village of Le Porge, the evacuation came with only minutes of warning. Gendarmes went door-to-door ordering residents to leave, giving her family just two minutes to depart with their two young children, ages two and five. “We had already packed suitcases just in case, but they gave us only two minutes and carefully checked that nobody was still inside the house,” she said, adding that she had already begun to feel surrounded by advancing flames.

The Cap Ferret fire is not the only major blaze raging in southwestern France this week. Firefighters are also battling a second large wildfire near the town of Biscarrosse, southwest of Bordeaux, which broke out on Thursday and has already forced the evacuation of 18,000 people. Landes prefect Gilles Clavreul noted that the scale of this year’s fire season is unprecedented for the region. “We have never experienced anything like this,” he said.

This year’s wave of intense wildfires follows three record-breaking heatwaves that have hit France since May, part of a global pattern of more frequent and more severe extreme weather events directly tied to human-caused climate change. The heat has already caused thousands of excess deaths across the country, dried up major rivers, and created ideal dry conditions for wildfire ignition and spread.