French president pledges support on visit to fire zone, vows: ‘We will win this battle together’

LEGE-CAP FERRET, France (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron urged fire crews to “stay strong” as they battled Monday to bring a monster wildfire under control, warning that the fight will take time but vowing, “We will win this battle together.”

On a visit to a coordination center for the massive firefighting effort in southwest France, Macron heard how the blaze raging since last week has been wildly unpredictable, transforming at times into a self-feeding fire storm as it burned through an area four times the size of Paris and forced 220,000 people to flee their homes.

“We’re facing a completely unprecedented fire,” Macron said, describing the situation as France’s worst fire-related crisis since World War II.

He praised firefighting teams who stopped the inferno’s progression Monday after days of spreading flames that edged toward the wine region city of Bordeaux. But with woodlands still smoldering, he and other government officials cautioned that the battle isn’t yet won, with forests turned tinder-dry by successive heat waves this year and another forecast for this week.

“The weeks ahead will be hard. We must hold firm,” Macron said.

Fire crews racing against feared next heat wave

With thousands of firefighters on the ground and rotations of water- and retardant-dropping aircraft, it became a race against time Monday to contain the blaze before temperatures soar, with national weather service forecasts of 35 C (95 F) and above in southwest France from Tuesday.

Authorities also are working to feed, shelter and care for evacuees who fled in staggering numbers: 250,000 in the southwest, driven away by two fires.

Macron spoke of displaced people “traumatized” by the upheaval and “who sometimes have lost everything.”

No new evacuations were announced Monday. But with France about to enter its peak August tourist season, authorities for the Gironde region around Bordeaux worked to keep vacationers away, banning holiday camps for children and for people with disabilities. Government ministers also urged people not to travel to the region that is popular for its Atlantic beaches, famous wines and some of France’s largest expanses of forests.

Crews using earth movers tore up strips of forest and scrubland to create barren spaces, intended to block the flames that officials said had come within 15 kilometers (10 miles) of Bordeaux’s outskirts. Farmers kept fire crews supplied with water, transporting it to them in tanks.

Briefing Macron, the Gironde region’s fire chief explained how crews had wrestled with the blaze unlike any they’d previously tackled, extraordinarily virulent and capricious, “a fire that’s going everywhere” and which generated electrical storms that sparked more flare-ups.

“The last 24 hours went well, thanks to your work” Macron told firefighters. “Doubtless, tomorrow will be more complicated than today.”

Spain is also battling fires

Around a dozen countries have provided planes, helicopters, firefighters and other assistance to both France and Spain, which is also fighting unprecedented blazes. All told, fires in the two countries have forced more than 330,000 people to flee.

In Spain, wildfires have burned out of control around Madrid and in the Valencia region. Authorities evacuated 79,000 people and confined 30,000 others to their homes.

In both Spain and France, the exceptional scale of the fires — fueled by heat waves that hit especially hard and early this year, making forests and scrubland tinder-dry — are driving calls for stronger action against climate change.

“What we are experiencing is not a series of isolated incidents. It is the consequence of a climate emergency that is making wildfires even more violent, heat waves more frequent,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said.

A fire raging in hilly, rural terrain in Ávila, west of Madrid, has become Spain’s largest on record, scorching 500 square kilometers (193 square miles), the government said. That’s five times the size of Barcelona.

“Look at how the valley is burned. Look at the houses, the people,” said David Gonzalez, a 48-year-old gardener who used his van to run supplies to firefighters in Ávila.

“We are feeling lot of anger and helplessness. It’s something inhuman,” he said.

Fires have burned 1,530 square kilometers (590 square miles) this year in Spain — six times the area scorched by blazes in the first half of 2025, said Sara Aagesen, the ecology minister.

The minister said that another heat wave forecast from Tuesday — which would be Spain’s fourth so far this year — could ratchet up the fire danger. Spain’s weather agency forecast temperatures above 40 C (104 F).

Water-dropping planes combat fire in Italy

A wildfire driven by strong winds broke out on Sunday afternoon near Peschici, in Italy’s southern Puglia region, burning pine forest and scrub and forcing the evacuation of about 300 tourists from beaches and campgrounds, authorities said.

The Coast Guard evacuated tourists by sea to nearby Vieste, where authorities opened temporary shelters.

Three Canadair water-bombing planes and fire crews on the ground continued Monday to battle the blaze, which revived memories of devastating wildfires that hit the same coastal area in 2007.

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Leicester reported from Paris. Associated Press writers Joseph Wilson in Barcelona, Iain Sullivan in El Tiemblo, Spain, and Giada Zampano in Rome contributed.

Mark Carlson, Emma Da Silva And John Leicester, The Associated Press