French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu has ordered the armed forces to deploy an A400M military transport aircraft to help combat fires raging in the southwest, his office said.
The French government said 197,000 people have been evacuated because of wildfires raging near Bordeaux.
Hundreds of firefighters have spent the past few days battling blazes in the southwestern department of Gironde, where the fires are particularly intense, as well as near the town of Biscarrosse in the neighbouring department of Landes.
The Ministries of Interior and Defence have signed a joint agreement with Airbus to make available and equip, on an experimental basis, an A400M aircraft with an aerial firefighting kit to help France douse the blazes.
The aircraft is to be equipped with a dispensing kit that can release 20 tonnes of fire retardant, equivalent to the capacity of two Dash firefighting aircraft.
Its deployment had previously been scheduled for the end of the month due to preparations and testing.
“The A400M will be deployed ahead of advancing fires to help secure the most vulnerable areas,” the Interior Ministry said in a statement this week.
“The operational use of an A400M in this configuration requires technical preparation, flight testing and the qualification of military crews, a process that began on July 20.”
The wildfires have burned nearly 98,000 hectares, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said on Saturday, describing the total as a “historic record.”
“There are still a number of fires across the country that have not yet been brought under control,” he said, singling out major blazes in the southwestern departments of Gironde and Landes.
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Almost 200,000 people have now been evacuated from homes and campsites in south-west France as an ‘unprecedented’ wildfire rages – on Friday evening as the local Préfet announced that a strong westerly wind was accelerating the fire in the direction of Bordeaux.
Sophie Brocas said that inhabitants of seven communes to the west of Bordeaux had received the order to evacuate overnight.
She added that the fire, which began at Lège-Cap-Ferrat, is now moving in the direction of Bordeaux.
In Bordeaux itself residents have been warned of high levels of air pollution due to smoke. After chairing a late-night emergency meeting, prime minister Sébastien Lecornu announced that 1.5 million FFP2 masks are being sent to the area, along with extra emergency crews and members of the military.
There is currently no evacuation order for the city.
The wildfire area, with road closures. Map: Google maps
Drivers are being asked to avoid the Bordeaux area in order to keep the roads clear for emergency crews – roads watchdog Bison Futé has advised people heading for Spain to use the A20 and A64 as an alternative route.
President Emmanuel Macron on Friday evening announced that he had ordered the military to mobilise to aid the firefighting effort.
France has been battered by three heatwaves since May as part of increasingly common extreme weather episodes linked to climate change, causing excess deaths, drying up rivers and fuelling wildfires.
On Friday afternoon, the prefect of the Var département announced on X that evacuation orders have been issued for residents in neighbourhoods south of Barjols and east of Pontevès. This comes as the fires that had been previously under control in the area have started up again.
Meanwhile, fires in Landes are still active in south-west France.
Film footage from Biscarrosse, Landes, showed horses galloping away from the fire, reportedly released by a riding stables in the evacuation zone.
🇫🇷 Des images publiées par des internautes montrent des chevaux galopant dans une rue de Biscarrosse, alors que des incendies de forêt ravagent le Sud-Ouest de la France. Le feu a parcouru plus de 2.500 hectares jusqu’aux portes de la ville et a provoqué l’évacuation de 23.000 personnes ⤵️
— Agence France-Presse (@afp.com) 24 July 2026 at 17:23
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Early on Friday morning, hundreds of people fled by boat from a peninsula, as authorities ordered it evacuated in the face of rapidly advancing flames.
Boats have ferried more than 400 people so far from the Cap Ferret peninsula that stretches along France’s Atlantic coast, west of the city of Bordeaux, city authorities said.
The two wildfires in Gironde, close to Bordeaux, and Biscarrosse in the département of Landes. Map: Google maps
The fires were “totally unpredictable”, Julien Marion, Director General of Civil Protection, told RTL radio on Friday morning.
“Their behaviour is completely unpredictable; they are changing and spreading very quickly,” he explained. “That is why the prefects have carried out these precautionary evacuations.
Around 12,000 tourists were evacuated from campsites and holiday lets late on Wednesday, then a further 8,800 from more camping sites on Thursday.
Tens of thousands of local residents have been evacuated from the homes over the past two days, with local authorities setting up emergency shelters in nearby towns.
Patrick Martineau, 69, was among hundreds of residents living on the edge of the forest in Le Porge, Gironde, who had to leave quickly.
“Police came banging on the doors of all the houses,” he said. “It’s a bit scary.
“When we bought a home here, we never thought there would be a fire risk.”
In the neighbouring village of Lege-Cap-Ferret, Elke Urbain and her two daughters spent the night in a community hall after being evacuated.
“We were at the beach and they told us to go back to the campsite to grab our things,” said the 50-year-old from Belgium.
“We’re not scared because we’re being looked after but we’re sad for the locals,” she added.
Hundreds of firefighters have been battling the blazes since Wednesday and on Friday morning president Emmanuel Macron confirmed that France had requested assistance from the EU Civil Protection mechanism.
He posted: “We will soon have support from two Croatian Canadair aircraft, two Portuguese Air Tractors and two heavy-lift Black Hawk helicopters from the Czech Republic and Slovakia.”
Le Porge mayor Martial Zaninetti and a resident said the fire appeared to have been started by a brush-clearing machine.
READ ALSO: Explained: The causes of France’s increasingly severe wildfires
Bernard Roche, a 75-year-old former lifeguard, evacuated his cabin in the woods on Wednesday.
“The forest has been particularly dry these past few days,” he said.
Large parts of France remain on high alert for wildfires over the weekend.
The Meteo France fire risk map for July 24th.
The wildfire is just the latest in France in recent weeks.
Fires in 2022 damaged 30,000 hectares of the same forest, and forced some 50,000 people to be evacuated.
In southern France, a fire in the area of Ponteves north-east of the city of Marseille had stabilised on Thursday after ripping through 2,500 hectares and destroying 10 houses, officials said.
Roaring flames devastated a ten percent of the UNESCO-listed Fontainebleau forest outside Paris, in a rare fire so far north.
Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said on Wednesday that France has recorded 12,500 wildfire outbreaks since the start of 2026.
Speaking at a fire station near Bordeaux after meeting the families of two firefighters who died while tackling a blaze near the city’s airport, he said 44,000 hectares have already burned this year.
Of the 53 heatwaves recorded nationwide since 1947 until late June, half have occurred since 2010, according to national weather office Meteo-France.
Scientists have long warned that climate change caused by human use of fossil fuels will make periods of drought more intense and longer-lasting, creating the ideal conditions for wildfires.
READ ALSO: Is it safe to come to France in wildfire season?
Around 100 Paris firefighters were being deployed Saturday to southwest France to help battle raging wildfires, the head of the Paris Fire Brigade told AFP.
Hundreds of firefighters have spent the past three days battling blazes in the southwestern department of Gironde, where the fires are particularly intense, as well as since Thursday near the town of Biscarrosse in the neighbouring department of Landes.
Arnaud de Cacqueray, commander of the Paris Fire Brigade, said the firefighters would primarily be involved in wildfire suppression operations.
He said 45 Paris firefighters and six vehicles had already been deployed to Gironde.
The wildfires in Gironde and Landes have forced the evacuation of more than 140,000 people and have already consumed 22,000 hectares (54,000 acres) of land.
De Cacqueray said he expected the deployment to have an impact on response times in Paris, adding people should contact firefighters in the capital “only in cases of absolute emergency”.
Paris firefighters were previously sent to help combat devastating wildfires in southwestern France in 2022.
This time, however, the deployment is “nearly three times greater than what we deployed in 2022,” de Cacqueray said.