France orders 4,000 more evacuated as fires displace a third of a million across southwest Europe

French authorities ordered 4,000 more people evacuated from tourist sites along its Atlantic coast on Tuesday (July 28, 2026), widening what may be France’s largest peacetime evacuation as returning heat threatened firefighters’ fragile hold on a vast wildfire west of Bordeaux.

Fresh flames erupted later Tuesday (July 28, 2026) near Grand Crohot, a popular Atlantic beach on the Lege-Cap-Ferret peninsula, local authorities said. A fleet of 23 planes and helicopters — up from 18 — dropped water and fire retardant as crews fought to keep the renewed flames from spreading.

“The situation remains complicated. That’s clear. We’re not out of the woods,” Gironde prefect Sophie Brocas said.

She said that about 60,000 residents who were evacuated as a precaution from Le Haillan and parts of Merignac and Eysines outside Bordeaux’s ring road could return on Tuesday (July 29, 2026). No fires had broken out in the three areas, but residents were told to keep their mobile phones on and emergency bags packed.

The opposing movements — thousands ordered out of coastal resorts while those returning were told to be on the alert — underscored how precarious the fire’s hold remained.

Across France and Spain, roughly 3,30,000 people have been driven from homes and vacation sites by huge wildfires. Spain braced for its fourth heat wave of the summer, with several blazes still burning out of control, including the largest in its recorded history.

Even so, Spanish authorities began lifting evacuation and stay-at-home orders for thousands of people after firefighters made progress overnight.

The Gironde fire has burnt an area four times the size of Paris and forced 220,000 people to evacuate. Interior Minister Laurent Nunez has said it is “very likely” the largest civilian evacuation operation carried out in the country outside war.

Fire making its own weather

At its most violent, the Gironde blaze created a gargantuan black thundercloud, electrified and lit from within. It generated lightning, violent winds and new fires beyond the original front. The phenomenon, known as a pyrocumulonimbus cloud, was the first recorded in France.

France’s national weather service placed Gironde under a yellow heat warning beginning at midday Tuesday, forecasting inland temperatures of 33 to 35°C.

More than 1,160 square kilometres have burnt across France this year, according to the Interior Ministry.

Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent, heating at more than twice the global average, according to the European Union’s Copernicus climate service. Western Europe recorded its hottest June on record, with extreme heat and widespread dryness contributing to the spread and intensification of fires in France and Spain, Copernicus said.