Wildfires in France and Spain force mass evacuations

**Charlotte Gannigan** (0:00)
This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Charlotte Gannigan, and at 15 Hours GMT on Monday, the 27th of July, these are our main stories. More than 300,000 people have been forced to flee their homes in France and Spain as wildfires continue to rage. We get the latest from Sudan as the army claims a victory against the paramilitary group, the RSF. Another mass shooting in the US. Three people are killed at a food festival in Seattle.
Also in this podcast, the controversial German anatomist Gunther von Hagens, who preserved and displayed bodies, has died.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:46)
And?

**Charlotte Gannigan** (0:56)
A 75-year sporting curse is finally broken.
We start the podcast in Western Europe, where multiple wildfires are burning across France and Spain. Firefighters and local authorities are bracing for yet another heat wave. And with temperatures of over 40 degrees expected in the coming hours, there are fears the bad situation is about to get worse. In the French region of Gironde alone, in the southwest of the country, 200,000 people have already been forced to evacuate. The French president Emmanuel Macron held a crisis meeting on Monday and is set to visit the region later.
One fire is just 15 kilometres from the city of Bordeaux. The region has asked tourists to stay away and has cancelled holiday camps. Jean-Luc Glaise is president of the Gironde department and in charge of the firefighters. He's warned that France needs more help.

**Jean-Luc Glaise** (1:59)
It's not under control now. The whole wildfire are 120 kilometres. So it's very, very long. We would need, I suppose, more planes and a lot of more people. It's not possible now to put firefighter trucks every 100 metres or 300 metres. We don't have enough people and enough trucks. And even, I think, France don't have enough.

**Charlotte Gannigan** (2:28)
In Spain, more than 75,000 people have been evacuated across the country. The Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has been visiting an area in the Valencia region where a huge fire is out of control. He's declared a civil protection emergency. Our correspondent Sarah Rainsford has been watching developments.

**Sarah Rainsford** (2:51)
The fire they're battling in southwestern France is the country's worst in decades. In the Gironde region, around Bordeaux, the military are now helping firefighters and police, but still struggling to bring the flames under control. This firefighter says what they're facing is unusual. A fire that speeds up, then slows down, moves left, then right, he says. It is very hard to read.
Locals are pitching in trying to protect property and land, using tractors with water tanks or just buckets, attempting to dampen down smaller fires before they can take hold.

**SPEAKER_5** (3:40)
It makes you want to cry.

**Thomas Mkwane** (3:41)
Honestly, it's horrible.

**Sarah Rainsford** (3:43)
We're overwhelmed.

**Gunther von Hagens** (3:44)
The firefighters are doing what they can, but there aren't enough resources.

**Michael Byrne** (3:48)
So we're helping them.

**Thomas Mkwane** (3:49)
But honestly, it's hard.

**SPEAKER_5** (3:51)
It's really hard.

**Sarah Rainsford** (3:56)
Because every time one fire is doused, it seems there are more sparks.
Tens of thousands of people have had to abandon their homes for camp beds in sports centres and in schools. Michel left Arcachon on the coast on Friday and says the road back is now impassable. She had been hoping to go home today, but the fire is still spreading. The mayor of Bordeaux has stressed reports the city itself is being evacuated are false. But France's interior minister called conditions unfavorable, and a regional official has warned tourists to stay away or to leave until this fire has been contained.
In Spain, there are now a dozen fires blazing, including new ones near Valencia, where helicopters have been shuttling through thick gray smoke, with empty sacks of water onto the flames. Outside Madrid, the immediate danger seems to have eased, but the interior minister called the fires there the most aggressive Spain has ever seen. And the prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, warned of difficult hours ahead. He said the flames had already torched six times more land than last year. One reason is all the vegetation produced by a very wet winter that's made more fuel for fires when the summer is as dry and as hot as this one. Michael Byrne is a climate scientist at St. Andrews.

**Michael Byrne** (5:48)
It's really the perfect storm for wildfires and why we are very confident as climate scientists that this threat of wildfires is really only going to go one way and that way is more severe unfortunately.

**Sarah Rainsford** (6:02)
In Spain and in France, the word used most often for these fires is unpredictable. And this week, once again, the temperature is expected to rise.