"The situation is getting complicated": firefighters, exhausted on the eighth day of the mega-fire in France

BarcelonaL's most serious fire on record in France remains stabilized, but out of control. Firefighters have so far managed to contain the flames 15 kilometers from Bordeaux. During the night, they were able to control some tongues of fire that reignited in the towns of Camp de Souge, Arès and Le Temple, so the devastated area remains at 42,000 hectares. But on the eighth day of efforts to extinguish the fire that is ravaging the Gironde region, emergency services are at their limit and extinction still seems a distant goal. "There are flare-ups that require a massive deployment of troops and air resources. Fatigue is present, as we have been fighting for eight days," Commander Matthieu Jomain assured in statements to BFMTV. "The situation is getting complicated," he warned.

Although the night from Tuesday to Wednesday has been "calm," authorities warn that vigilance cannot be lowered: during the afternoon, meteorological conditions worsened with "dry winds" and temperatures that exceeded 40 degrees in some areas like Bordeaux, according to the Infoclimat portal. Therefore, the deployment must remain immense: nearly 2,750 firefighters, 1,500 soldiers, 1,440 personnel from other security forces, and 18 aerial resources – including an A400M military aircraft adapted to drop retardant liquid – are working to combat the fire. Similarly, traffic restrictions, with closures on the A-63 motorway and the southern Bordeaux railway network, remain in place.

The Gironde fire has highlighted the shortcomings of the French emergency service. Last Wednesday, the day the mega-fire in Gironde began, firefighters had already reported a lack of equipment and personnel due to the deaths of two firefighters in the region the day before, July 21. Before the fire broke out near Bordeaux, the various corps were already having to deal with an average of more than thirty fires per day. "The staff involved work in continuous shifts, sometimes for very long periods," denounces the firefighters' union in a statement. At the same time, "the need for relief, support, and reinforcements continues to increase."

Faced with a deployment of this magnitude, the volunteer firefighters' union has called for a mobilization of former firefighters, medical personnel, people with logistical or transport skills. Their proposal is to draw up a national census to deal with the "multiplication of fires of particularly concerning scale and intensity".

In parallel, sixteen departments of the country are on orange alert for extreme temperatures this Wednesday, and twenty-three are expected to be by Thursday. In some, the fire continues to burn. In the Landes region, neighboring Gironde, the fire is under control after having burned 3,600 hectares. The same is true in the Var department, on the east coast, where the fire that devastated nearly 4,800 hectares was officially declared under control on Tuesday evening. In contrast, the flames continue to advance in Haute-Corse and Hautes-Alpes. The first fire has burned 1,083 hectares, according to the latest figures, published on Tuesday evening; and that in the Hautes-Alpes region has burned 510 hectares.

Another consequence of the fires is that air quality, especially in the Gironde region, has been compromised. The French Minister of Health, Stéphanie Rist, has warned that the smoke can cause respiratory problems and has urged vulnerable people or those with heart or lung diseases to stay home or go out wearing a mask. The ministry, she assures, has made more than 5 million FFP2 masks available to pharmacies so that users who need them only have to collect them. During the same press conference, the minister reported that 42 medico-social establishments have been evacuated so far, and a total of 4,272 people have been displaced, mainly the elderly or people with disabilities.

A questioned model

Why do fires burn with such intensity? Seeing images of forests engulfed by flames, the orderly arrangement of the burnt trees, which are an identical distance apart, is striking. This is explained because the forest areas currently burning in Gironde and Landes are mainly composed of artificial forests. Most are planted in what are called "regular monospecific stands." As explained by Husbert Pérez, an ecologist at the French environmental consultancy Envolis, these are "areas with a homogeneous mosaic of vegetation"; in other words, forests composed of a single species and with trees of the same age. This system, which is very economically efficient for timber exploitation, has a problem: when a fire starts, the fuel supply is almost continuous. The lack of diversity means there are no other moister trees that can act as firebreaks, causing the fire to advance more quickly without encountering obstacles.

To this is added that the burnt forest areas are mainly maritime pine forests intended for timber production. This species is extremely flammable due to the high concentration of resin and the behavior of its pinecones, which, as Pérez warns, "retain embers inside and explode, favoring propagation." Furthermore, the pine needles that accumulate at the base create a vegetation layer that causes the fire to spread rapidly. While repeated heatwaves, droughts, and strong winds continue to be the main triggers of the fires, a study published in the journal Nature in 2025 asserts that plantations in temperate climatic regions (like the Mediterranean) are twice as likely to burn than natural forests.