Macron visits Bordeaux wildfire zone after 240 homes destroyed

French President Emmanuel Macron was due to visit southwest France on Monday after a wildfire west of Bordeaux burned 42,000 hectares of pine forest and destroyed 240 homes, his office said.

Macron was expected to meet firefighters and local officials and show support for those responding to the blaze.

Authorities said overnight drizzle had weakened the fire, but it remained uncontained.

Firefighters said the wildfire had generated a pyrocumulonimbus, a fire-created storm cloud that can produce powerful and unpredictable winds.

Lieutenant Colonel Eric Brocardi, a spokesman for the National Firefighters Federation of France, described it as the first recorded occurrence of the phenomenon in the country.

Brocardi said intense heat at the centre of the fire was forcing air rapidly upwards and creating the storm cloud.

The cloud was producing shifting winds that made the blaze more difficult to predict and could generate lightning capable of starting or intensifying fires, he said.

Crews were prioritising evacuations, protecting critical sites and rescuing animals. Where firefighters could not confront the flames directly, they were using defensive tactics to limit their spread.