They woke to emergency alerts at 4am and 6am, ordering them to flee “by all means necessary”. Within minutes, Zac Morrison and his family were racing through the darkness, metres from flames that towered six storeys high.
The 21-year-old from London had arrived in Cap Ferret, a pine-covered peninsula 40 miles south-west of Bordeaux, on Thursday for what was meant to be a tranquil holiday. Instead, he told the BBC, the scene was “something like out of a movie” – the gendarmerie going door to door, tourists streaming to the beaches with their suitcases.
“Tourists describe desperate escapes from France wildfires as 220,000 displaced and military deployed.”
Across south-west France and central Spain, huge forest fires have now displaced more than 220,000 people. The French military has been drafted in to help, while the Spanish government declared a national emergency. Winds and continued heat are still fanning the flames; some tourists report smelling acrid smoke like a “bonfire” far outside the affected zones.
Morrison’s family, including his 11-year-old brother Nate, took shelter on a beach in nearby Arcachon before a relative offered them a place to stay. Since the first alert, he said, they received four different evacuation orders – “we moved away from one fire to only get put into the crosshairs of another”.
“Other people have been sleeping in schools and warehouses and the beaches have had people just waiting for the go ahead,” he added. “There’s people on the beach here with their suitcases.”
The family is now awaiting instructions on whether they can continue their holiday until mid August. “It rained last night but we are hearing that electricity may be cut out over the peninsula, especially as the ash clouds go towards Bordeaux… I’ve heard about houses burning in just an hour, it’s scary but sadly people here are getting used to it.”
Despite the crisis, flights to Bordeaux and Madrid – the closest cities to the blaze-hit regions – are currently not affected. On Saturday, a French foreign minister described the fires as a “tragedy” but urged tourists not to cancel their travel plans.