Thousands evacuated as wildfire burns pine forest in southwest France

Almost 12,000 people, including more than 10,000 tourists, were forced to leave part of southwest France overnight as a wildfire burned through a seaside pine forest, authorities said Thursday.

The blaze in Le Porge, near Bordeaux, had burned 2,000 hectares since Wednesday, officials said. The source described the area burned as about three times the size of Gibraltar.

Authorities said those evacuated included tourists from camping sites and other holiday accommodation, as well as hundreds of residents from villages around the forest.

Skies in the coastal village of Le Porge were orange on Thursday morning. Hundreds of firefighters were fighting the fire, which started around midday on Wednesday and moved through dense pine woodland. Flames reached 10 metres in some areas.

Julie Leonard, a holidaymaker from Bordeaux, told AFP that she saw a large cloud of black smoke spreading across the sky on Wednesday afternoon.

Le Porge mayor Martial Zaninetti said the fire appeared to have been started by a brush-clearing machine. Police said they were investigating the possibility that an accident started the blaze.

The source said France has been hit by three heatwaves since May as part of increasingly common extreme weather episodes linked to climate change. It said the conditions had caused excess deaths, dried up rivers and fuelled wildfires.

The source also said flames in the UNESCO-listed Fontainebleau forest outside Paris last week burned 2,000 hectares, in what it described as a rare fire so far north.