Sawt Falasteen - France, Spain battle 'unpredictable' wildfires as 325,000 evacuated

The forest infernos, raging for days unchecked in France's southwest and in central Spain near Madrid, were among the worst each nation has seen in peacetime.

France's major fire has caused an unprecedented "pyrocumulonimbus": a gigantic, untamable fire cloud that creates its own winds and packs lightning that causes more blazes, according to the National Firefighters Federation of France (FNSPF).

"It's a David-versus-Goliath scenario: the idea is that, at some point, we'll find a weak spot and strike there," said FNSPF spokesman Eric Brocardi.

French President Emmanuel Macron has called a crisis cabinet meeting for Monday morning to discuss responses to the fires, his office said Sunday.

Spanish officials voiced optimism they were starting to get a grip on some of their fires -- though on the weekend they were confronted with a new fire front, near the eastern coastal city of Valencia, which forced 15,000 people to flee.

"Difficult hours lie ahead," Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said as he visited the fire zone in Avila province west of Madrid.

A Spanish cabinet member said the fire around the town of Avila was the largest in the country's history.

Other EU countries have been sending help to Spain and France in the form of aircraft, fire crews and vehicles.

Scientists say that such weather emergencies are being made more extreme and frequent by climate change.

The disasters, coming at the peak of the summer vacation period when tourists flock to both countries, were fuelled by woodland parched to tinder by successive heatwaves and lack of rain since May.

"When we flew into Madrid we could see the fire very close to the airport," said Pilar, a 69-year-old New Zealand tourist who declined to give her last name. She was carrying a mask in case the smoke situation in the city became worse.

Letisha Lucas, a 33-year-old tourist from Canada -- which has its own wildfires happening -- said the smoke smell was obvious on arrival in Madrid "and very irritating on the throat". She added that the proximity of the blaze left her "kind of nervous".

The prefect of the Gironde department where France's fires are concentrated asked tourists to stay away and look for "alternative destinations".

- 'Extremely intense' fire -

France's Interior Minister Laurent Nunez warned "the situation remains very unfavourable" for fires across the country, where more than 250,000 people had been evacuated.

The main fire in the southwest Gironde region, where Bordeaux is located, was "extremely intense and unpredictable... generating its own winds and advancing erratically toward the Bordeaux metropolitan area", he said on X.

Meanwhile, French weather forecasters say another heatwave could hit the country starting Tuesday, with temperatures reaching 40C in parts of the country.

At least 240 homes have been destroyed in surrounding areas, many of them in the village of Le Porge. But Bordeaux's mayor said there were no plans to evacuate the city's urban area, home to 850,000 people and currently sheltering thousands evacuated from zones close by.

Though the fire was 15 kilometres (nine miles) from Bordeaux's suburbs, it "is largely to the south. It is not advancing on the western side," said the mayor, Thomas Cazenave, adding that local officials remained "vigilant".

But France's defence ministry said it has taken special steps to protect industrial sites in the Bordeaux region, a key centre of the country's aerospace industry.

The principal freeway to the south of Bordeaux and rail services have been cut.

Some 2,500 firefighters, 1,500 military personnel and around 1,200 police have been deployed to the Gironde region.

- King decries damage -

In Spain, the head of the civil protection service said the country was fighting a "monster".

"Across this national wildfire crisis, we are dealing with a perimeter of 280 kilometres encompassing 77,000 hectares," Virginia Barcones told state broadcaster TVE.

King Felipe VI, visiting an emergency shelter for evacuees on Madrid's western outskirts, said the wildfires had caused "incalculable" damage to his country's natural heritage.

Around 75,000 residents have been evacuated from the Madrid region, Avila, Toledo and from the eastern region of Castellon in Valencia.

Olga Congacha, 50, who had to flee her village of Robledo de Chavela west of Madrid with hastily grabbed documents and clothes, told AFP she felt "panicked" when told to leave her home.

"I didn't know whether to cry or what. It was a moment when you feel awful," she said.

She added she was allowed a brief visit to her house Sunday to get medicine, to find it covered in ash and the streets deserted.

Authorities said winds were pushing the wildfires near Madrid to the south, away from the capital for now, but forcing more evacuations of villages in their path.

Hundreds of kilometres away, the new Valencia fire was proving "very intense", Pilar Bernabe, the central government delegate to Valencia wrote on X.

On Saturday, one person was killed near Valencia in a separate, smaller fire.

That was the only civilian death so far reported in the wildfires. In France the death toll was two firefighters killed near Bordeaux on Tuesday.

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I.Saadi--SF-PST