France sends boats to evacuate tourist hotspot Cap Ferret as wildfires rage
By Issy Ronald, Pierre P Bairin, CNN
(CNN) — French authorities ordered the complete evacuation of the Cap Ferret peninsula on Friday, launching boats to help rescue people from the popular tourist destination that’s now threatened by wildfires.
Evacuation boats operated from three piers on the peninsula, which is situated about 70 kilometers (43 miles) west of Bordeaux in southwestern France, the province’s prefect, Sophie Brocas, said Friday morning.
Such an operation demonstrates the severity of the wildfires currently ripping across parts of southern France and elsewhere in Europe, fueled by record-breaking, climate change-driven heat waves that have turned the landscape into a tinderbox.
Similar fierce wildfires in Spain have forced the government to declare a national state of emergency.
In France’s Cap Ferret alone, 40,000 people have been evacuated, according to France’s Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez, though only a few hundred of those were evacuated by sea.
Just one road connects the Hamptons-like peninsula to the mainland, making evacuation a priority in case fires cut off access to this road.
Videos from the area show the sky shrouded in smoke, scorched vegetation and firefighters battling outbreaks that have sprung up in more residential areas.
The fire grew by up to 1,000 hectares (4 square miles) every hour overnight, said Marc Vermeulen, director of Gironde’s Fire and Rescue Service, on Friday.
“Because the fire was so powerful, it also threw off spot fires right into the center of the town while it was still on the outskirts. We also had burning embers that caused the fire to spread from house to house,” Vermeulen said.
Some 53 homes and one campsite have been burnt in the blaze, which 1,000 firefighters are battling, Brocas said
Another wildfire is also burning in the area near Biscarrosse, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Cap Ferret, which has already forced 23,000 people to be evacuated.
Other European Union countries have sent firefighting aircraft to help Paris fight the wildfires following a request for assistance from French President Emmanuel Macron.
“We will soon be able to count on reinforcements from two Croatian Canadair aircraft, two Portuguese Air Tractor planes, as well as two heavy Black Hawk helicopters from the Czech Republic and Slovakia,” Macron posted on X Friday.
Europe deals with wildfires every summer. But this year the continent has seen far more land burnt than the annual average for the same period, according to data from the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS).
The situation is particularly bad in France, which has already recorded more than 300 wildfires this year, compared to an annual average of 93, according to the EFFIS.
The climate crisis is driving hotter, drier weather, which sets the stage for fiercer fire seasons as it parches the landscape, sucking waters from rivers, lakes and soil.
The brutal record-breaking June heatwaves that struck Europe earlier this summer would have been “virtually impossible” without a human-driven climate crisis, according to an analysis by World Weather Attribution.
Fires rage in Spain
Thick plumes of wildfire smoke also darkened the sky above Spain on Friday as the country’s government declared a national emergency.
As of Friday morning, Spanish authorities said they had evacuated more than 10,000 people from a cluster of towns about 75 kilometers (47 miles) west of Madrid. Some of those included elderly care home residents and holidaymakers visiting campsites.
“I’ve lived here for 36 years and I’ve never seen anything like it,” resident Javier Martin, who lives in the town of Navaluenga, told Reuters. “Nor did I expect it. I thought they were going to get it under control last night, but it was already late, and it was all out of control.”
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
CNN’s Laura Paddison and Duarte Mendonca contributed reporting.
