{"id":50118,"date":"2025-08-06T18:33:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-06T18:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/50118\/"},"modified":"2025-08-06T18:33:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T18:33:09","slug":"its-a-catastrophe-massive-france-wildfire-eclipses-the-size-of-paris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/50118\/","title":{"rendered":"‘It’s a catastrophe’: Massive France wildfire eclipses the size of Paris"},"content":{"rendered":"

Published on Aug. 6, 2025, 2:56 PM<\/p>\n

This is “a disaster of unprecedented scale”<\/p>\n

By Charlotte Van Campenhout<\/p>\n

SAINT-LAURENT-DE-LA-CABRERISSE, France (Reuters) – Firefighters in southern France struggled on Wednesday to control a massive wildfire that has already swept through an area bigger than Paris, as the blaze spread rapidly through forests and villages, forcing residents and tourists to flee.<\/p>\n

One person died in the village of Saint-Laurent-de-la-Cabrerisse, about 30 kilometers from the city of Perpignan, the Aude prefecture said. The fire has burnt down at least 25 houses. Many roads in the area are closed.<\/p>\n

So far 13,000 hectares have burned – similar to the total area that burned across all of France in 2024, and more than twice the area hit by wildfires in 2023, environment Minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher said on X.<\/p>\n

SEE ALSO: From Canada to Europe: Wildfire smoke makes a 5,000-km journey across Atlantic<\/a><\/p>\n

The fire moved incredibly fast, leaving no time to prepare, said Dutch national Renate Koot, who was on holidays in Saint-Laurent-de-la-Cabrerisse with her partner and had to flee.<\/p>\n

“One moment we were on the phone with our children … thinking, ‘Look, a fire!’. The next, we had to jump in the car and leave, while praying for protection. We didn\u2019t take anything with us and just left,” she said. “We’re okay. Miraculously.”<\/p>\n

“It’s unbelievable. It’s a catastrophe,” said Spanish national Issa Medina, as the sound of firefighters echoed in the background. Medina was with her family in Saint-Laurent-de-la-Cabrerisse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published on Aug. 6, 2025, 2:56 PM This is “a disaster of unprecedented scale” By Charlotte Van Campenhout…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50119,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66,11311],"class_list":["post-50118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-environment","tag-science","tag-wildfire"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50118\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}