{"id":566513,"date":"2026-07-24T20:21:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T20:21:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/566513\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T20:21:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T20:21:16","slug":"france-sends-boats-to-evacuate-tourist-hotspot-cap-ferret-as-wildfires-rage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/566513\/","title":{"rendered":"France sends boats to evacuate tourist hotspot Cap Ferret as wildfires rage"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n French authorities ordered the complete evacuation of the Cap Ferret peninsula on Friday, launching boats to help rescue people from the popular tourist destination as wildfires tear across western Europe.\n <\/p>\n

\n 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\u2019s prefect, Sophie Brocas, said Friday morning.\n <\/p>\n

\n Such an operation demonstrates the severity of the wildfires currently ripping across parts of southern France and elsewhere in Europe, fueled by record-breaking<\/a>, climate change-driven heat waves that have turned the landscape into a tinderbox.\n <\/p>\n

\n Similar fierce wildfires in Spain have forced the government to declare a national state of emergency.\n <\/p>\n

\"Holidaymakers<\/p>\n

\n In France\u2019s Cap Ferret alone, 40,000 people have been evacuated, according to the country\u2019s Interior Minister Laurent Nu\u00f1ez, though only a few hundred of those were evacuated by sea.\n <\/p>\n

\n Just one road connects the Hamptons-like peninsula to the mainland, making evacuation a priority in case fires cut off access to this road.\n <\/p>\n

\n Residents described receiving text messages in the middle of the night telling them to evacuate. \u201c(There are) firefighters everywhere, police everywhere, checking that people have indeed left their homes,\u201d one resident told CNN affiliate BFMTV. \u201cJust 200 meters, 300 meters from here, you can see the wall of flames around L\u00e8ge \u2026 the flames are right there.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Videos from the area show the sky shrouded in smoke, scorched vegetation and firefighters battling outbreaks that have sprung up in more residential areas.\n <\/p>\n

\"People<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\n The fire grew by up to 1,000 hectares (4 square miles) every hour overnight, said Marc Vermeulen, director of Gironde\u2019s Fire and Rescue Service, on Friday.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cBecause 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,\u201d Vermeulen said.\n <\/p>\n

\n Some 53 homes and one campsite have been burnt in the blaze, which 1,000 firefighters are battling, Brocas said\n <\/p>\n

\n 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.\n <\/p>\n

\n Other European Union countries have sent firefighting aircraft to help Paris fight the wildfires following a request for assistance from French President Emmanuel Macron.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe will soon be able to count on reinforcements from two Croatian Canadair aircraft, two Portuguese Air Tractor \u200cplanes, as well as two heavy \u2060Black Hawk helicopters from the Czech Republic and Slovakia,\u201d Macron posted on X Friday.\n <\/p>\n

\n 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).\n <\/p>\n

\n 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. Currently, 32 wildfires are burning across the country, though some are much less serious than others, Nu\u00f1ez told AFP<\/a> Friday.\n <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\n 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.\n <\/p>\n

\n The brutal record-breaking June heatwaves that struck Europe earlier this summer would have been \u201cvirtually impossible\u201d without a human-driven climate crisis, according to an analysis by World Weather Attribution<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n

\n Thick plumes of wildfire smoke also darkened the sky above Spain on Friday as the country\u2019s government declared a national emergency.\n <\/p>\n

\"Wildfires<\/p>\n

\n As of Friday afternoon local time, Spanish authorities said they had evacuated more than 19,000 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.\n <\/p>\n

\n One evacuee, Enrique Martin, recalled running from his house and narrowly escaping the flames.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIt was a ball of fire and, if I\u2019d been five minutes later, it would have wiped us out. My wife put her foot down and that proved crucial,\u201d he told Reuters.\n <\/p>\n

\n The fire is the worst in the Madrid region\u2019s history as three separate blazes, fueled by hot and windy conditions, have merged together, according to the region\u2019s leader Isabel D\u00edaz Ayuso.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIt is true that it is 6,000 hectares (23 square miles),\u201d she said. \u201cIn other regions, that amount of land may not seem like much, but in a region like this, with a high concentration of homes and population, it is a catastrophe.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"French authorities ordered the complete evacuation of the Cap Ferret peninsula on Friday, launching boats to help rescue…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":566514,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[246,61,60,82],"class_list":["post-566513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=566513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566513\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/566514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=566513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=566513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=566513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}