{"id":714531,"date":"2026-07-28T01:05:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T01:05:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/714531\/"},"modified":"2026-07-28T01:05:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T01:05:12","slug":"it-felt-like-being-in-a-disaster-movie-uncertainty-after-evacuation-from-frances-gironde-wildfire-france","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/714531\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018It felt like being in a disaster movie\u2019: uncertainty after evacuation from France\u2019s Gironde wildfire | France"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sitting in their suburban apartment in M\u00e9rignac on the outskirts of Bordeaux, Krishma, an interpreter, and her husband, Nassir, first felt a sense of dread when a strange black cloud turned the sky dark in the middle of the day. Then a bitter burning smell filled the air outside.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe sky changed colour. It seemed like a cloud but it was smoke covering the sun \u2013 it wasn\u2019t a natural phenomenon. It didn\u2019t seem real,\u201d said Nassir, an English literature graduate from Kabul who has been living in France<\/a> for seven years. \u201cWe couldn\u2019t breathe easily, you could feel it in your lungs.\u201d<\/p>\n

The acrid smell, which at first seemed like burning rubber then unmistakably like wood smoke, was blowing on the wind from the massive wildfire in Gironde<\/a> in south-western France. The blaze has torn through 42,000 hectares, an area four times the size of Paris, causing one of the biggest devastations of land in France since the second world war. The government said on Monday that although the fire had stopped growing, it was still blazing and a new heatwave this week could make it harder to fight.<\/p>\n

\"NassirNassir and Krishma had slept at the exhibition centre for three nights and did not know when they would be allowed home. Photograph: Angelique Chrisafis\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

As authorities carried out one of the biggest evacuations in modern French history, Krishma and Nassir were among 220,000 people ordered to flee their homes in Gironde. Many people were evacuated from wooded areas directly hit by fire, where at least 240 homes were destroyed. But in an unprecedented move, tens of thousands more were ordered by police to evacuate from more built-up, urban streets as the fire reached 9 miles (15km) from the outer edge of Bordeaux\u2019s vast suburban area.<\/p>\n

Krishma and Nassir had to evacuate their suburban street at midnight on Friday. With their two children aged 10 and eight, they quickly packed toothbrushes, toys, one change of clothes and personal documents into their car. On Monday afternoon, they were sitting on camp beds among hundreds of people sheltering in a hangar at Bordeaux\u2019s exhibition centre. They had slept there for three nights and did not know when they would be allowed home. The fire had not reached their residential area, but with the French government warning that the blaze was \u201cextremely intense and unpredictable\u201d, authorities would not yet allow a return, they said.<\/p>\n

A woman and her dog at the emergency shelter. Photograph: Caroline Blumberg\/AP<\/p>\n

The couple\u2019s main feeling was great sadness to see the Gironde forest destroyed. Krishma said: \u201cWhen we were in Afghanistan there were lots of explosions, suicide attacks, but that was related to around 30 years of war. When we came here, we never thought there would be a situation like this. It brought us back to the bad memories from our past.\u201d<\/p>\n

Across the vast hangar, Yves, who used to work on road maintenance in Bordeaux, was sitting with his 13-year-old mastiff dog, Ichka. Yves had fled his suburban house and garden in Le Haillan outside Bordeaux with his dog\u2019s bed under one arm and had carefully laid it out next to his camp bed. He had been ordered to evacuate in the early hours of Saturday morning.<\/p>\n

\"RaceRace against time to contain wildfires in France and Spain – The Latest<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had to leave because of the smoke,\u201d he said. His wife, an administrator who did not want to be named, said she still felt shaken. \u201cIt was terrifying \u2013 you would look up at the sky and it was completely orange, even after nightfall. It was bizarre. The fire was causing that, and it really made you anxious. I feel quite a lot of anger that all this forest has burned and been lost. Seeing all that is beautiful in nature just go up in smoke is extremely painful and sad.\u201d<\/p>\n

A firefighter watches the flames of a forest fire in Saint-Jean-d’Illac near Bordeaux. Photograph: Romain Perrocheau\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Others who had fled slept in their cars. Lo\u00efc, 66, a widower who worked in the metals and glass industries before becoming a decorator, had to leave his house in Saint-Jean-d\u2019Illac outside Bordeaux. \u201cI had been watching this strange fog in the sky. It was a darkness almost like an eclipse,\u201d he said. \u201cThere was a kind of ochre mist as light from the sun was diffused through falling ash. So much ash was falling that my car was turned completely grey.\u201d<\/p>\n

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A wildfire in Saint-Jean d\u2019Illac, in the Gironde region. Photograph: Manon Cruz\/Reuters<\/p>\n

At 1am on Saturday, Lo\u00efc was woken by banging on the door from his neighbour, a fire officer, saying he had to leave immediately. He grabbed only his wallet and car keys and ran to the car, leaving his mobile phone behind. There were so many people on the road and heading to the evacuation centre that he decided to stop elsewhere and get a bit of sleep in his car.<\/p>\n

When he woke on Saturday, listening to the news on the car radio, he knew he could not go home and headed instead for central Bordeaux, thinking the cinema would be a safe and comfortable place. \u201cI watched the two-part Charles de Gaulle epic \u2013 the wrong way round, with the second film first, but I knew the story already \u2013 then I watched The Odyssey. Then I went back to sleep in my car.\u201d<\/p>\n

The next day, he visited the graveyard where his wife was buried. On Monday morning, he arrived at the Bordeaux evacuation centre to get information on what to do next. He felt deeply saddened by the loss of the forest. \u201cMy generation grew up really attached to nature,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

A firefighter helps to battle the wildfires. Photograph: Manon Cruz\/Reuters<\/p>\n

Florence, a former teaching assistant in a primary school, sat on a camp bed with her two cats in their travelling cases after having to evacuate Le Haillan outside Bordeaux. \u201cI was distraught,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m asthmatic, I put tape around the windows of my apartment but I could still smell the smoke which was seeping in under my front door, so I put down wet rags. The sky was orange and grey, and there was soot everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said having to suddenly evacuate knowing a fire was raging in Gironde felt like something out of a war. \u201cIt felt like being in a disaster movie,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ve always really loved disaster movies \u2013 but now I feel like I\u2019ve actually been in one, so I don\u2019t ever want to watch a disaster movie again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fire rages in Saint-Jean-d\u2019Illac, some 30km from Bordeaux. Photograph: Romain Perrocheau\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sitting in their suburban apartment in M\u00e9rignac on the outskirts of Bordeaux, Krishma, an interpreter, and her husband,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":714532,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-714531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=714531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/714532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=714531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=714531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=714531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}