PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron will a hold a crisis cabinet meeting as firefighters faced another day battling massive wildfires scorching forests across France and Spain on Monday.A forecast of another heatwave threatened to worsen the crisis with wildfires closing in on the south-western city of Bordeaux.A new heatwave is set to complicate efforts to tackle the expanding blaze, which is about 15km from Bordeaux, mayor Thomas Cazenave said. Earlier he said there were no plans to evacuate the population of about 850,000.Tens of thousands of people have already been evacuated from Bordeaux’s surrounding region, with France’s Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez saying the situation remained “very unfavourable” and the fire was “moving erratically” towards the city.Weather forecasts for the country warned that temperatures could spike to 40C in some areas from Tuesday.Macron said on Saturday that France would “rebuild” and his government would “be there for as long as is needed”.Wildfires have raged across Europe over the past week, primarily in France and Spain.More than 325,000 people have fled their homes as some of the worst forest fires in history rage across southwest France and central Spain near Madrid.France’s fire, one of the nation’s biggest since World War II, has caused an unprecedented “pyrocumulonimbus” – a giant fire cloud that creates its own winds and packs lightning that causes more blazes, said the National Firefighters Federation of France (FNSPF).As Macron was expected to hold a crisis meeting to discuss the emergency, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez planned to visit fire-hit areas in Valencia, eastern Spain, on Monday. Firefighters there are battling a new blaze, and 15,000 people have been forced to flee their homes.Spain’s Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska, who is expected to visit affected areas in Valencia on Monday, said the fires were advancing slowly.”Difficult hours lie ahead,” Sanchez said during a visit to the fire zone in Ávila province, west of Madrid.He also called for “a major public pact on the climate emergency”.Earlier Sunday, civil protection chief Virginia Barcones, describing the fire around Avila, said the country was battling a “monster.””We are dealing with a perimeter of 280 kilometers encompassing 77,000 hectares,” Barcones told state broadcaster TVE of the wildfire.Scientists say climate change is making extreme weather events more frequent and severe. The fires have been fueled by dry forests, repeated heatwaves and a lack of rainfall since May.In France, around 220,000 people have been evacuated from Gironde, while 45 campsites have been forced to close, ruining the holiday plans of around 40,000 people. Interior Minister Laurent Nunez warned that the situation remained “very unfavorable,” with more than 250,000 people evacuated.The main fire in Gironde, home to Bordeaux, was “extremely intense and unpredictable… generating its own winds and advancing erratically toward the Bordeaux metropolitan area”, he said on X.The Gironde fire has burned about 42,000 hectares of land, destroyed at least 240 homes and injured 84 firefighters. A new heatwave expected on Tuesday could bring temperatures close to 40 degrees Celsius in some areas.Around 2,500 firefighters, 1,500 military personnel and 1,200 police officers have been deployed to the region. The main freeway south of Bordeaux and rail services have been cut.In Spain, around 75,000 people have been evacuated from the Madrid region, Avila, Toledo and the eastern region of Castellon in Valencia. Officials said winds had pushed wildfires away from the capital for the moment but forced more evacuations in nearby villages.King Felipe VI, visiting an emergency shelter in Villamanta on Madrid’s western outskirts, said the wildfires had caused “incalculable” damage to Spain’s natural heritage.Hundreds of kilometers away, the new Valencia fire was proving “very intense,” Pilar Bernabe, the central government delegate to Valencia, wrote on X.One person was killed on Saturday in a separate, smaller fire near Valencia, the only civilian death so far reported in the wildfires. In France, two firefighters were killed near Bordeaux on Tuesday.Italy was also battling wildfires.More than 400 tourists and beachgoers were evacuated by sea near the town of Peschici in the southern Puglia region, with another 300 people expected to be rescued, according to the coast guard.Wildfire experts warn that some recent blazes represent a new level of danger. Portuguese wildfire researcher Domingos Xavier Viegas said the “sixth-generation fires” – the most extreme and uncontrollable category of forest fire – are likely to become increasingly common as climate change intensifies.These fires release enormous amounts of energy, generating their own winds and becoming nearly impossible to control through direct firefighting.”When fires release more than 10 megawatts per meter, there is no capacity to suppress them through direct attack,” he said, noting that in recent years’ fires have been recorded releasing 20, 30, 40 and even 60 megawatts per meter at their fronts.At such intensity, the fires generate their own wind even in calm weather, making their behavior “very difficult to predict and control,” Viegas said, adding that direct intervention at the fire front becomes impossible even with heavy aerial firefighting resources.”The only option is to work on the tail and flanks, if conditions allow, or to create discontinuity zones using bulldozers. That is why we hear authorities saying their priority is to protect and evacuate people,” he said.Viegas said Portugal’s deadly 2017 wildfires, which killed more than 100 people, also showed the characteristics of sixth-generation fires.Canada has also been struggling with a major wildfire season. In western British Columbia, over 34,000 lightning strikes have sparked multiple fires, with videos on social media showing skies glowing red from smoke and flames.As of July 24, around 90 fires were still burning in British Columbia, while smoke from Canadian wildfires had spread across parts of the US, affecting cities along the East Coast and in the Midwest.According to the Canadian Wildland Fire Information System on Monday, 928 wildfires remained active nationwide.
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