France: one of the worst fires since World War II “does not prosper” but remains out of control

The fire is near Bordeaux, the wine-growing city, but the efforts of everyone and the rain in the early morning have reduced it. On Monday afternoon, it was announced that it has stopped growing, although it is not controlled.

“We have stabilized a situation that was completely unstable, but we still cannot control the fire. We are in a very active area“, declared Matthieu Jomain, the spokesperson for SDIS 33 from Bordeaux. “The weather conditions could allow progress on the fire, with temperatures falling and higher humidity,” he explained.

Marcheprime, near Bordeaux, It is the line of battle. Machinery is weeding an area with pine trees, which spread the fire. They remove them immediately so that the fire does not spread. They seek to create a belt to stop the fire.

However, a new heat wave, which will begin on Tuesday and last for a week, will worsen the fires, according to Météo France.

President Emmanuel Macron chaired a crisis meeting on the fires in Paris and will travel to Gironde in the coming hours. The Council of Ministers became “a cabinet of crises and decisions.” It was resolved mobilize all air and land means of the country to fight the fire.

France is facing a situation with fires that it has never experienced before, in which 2,600 firefighters and, in total, 9,000 people are involved, including farmers, gendarmes and 1,500 soldiers.

After the meeting of the Council of Ministers, the Minister of the Interior, Laurent Nuñez, addressed the nation. He indicated that, since the beginning of the season, more than 13,500 fires have been recorded and that 116,085 hectares of vegetation have burned since the beginning of the year. “The fire season is far from over,” he announced.

The mayor of Bordeaux, Thomas Cazenave, was “very cautious” but “ready to face all eventualities.” While the government announces that it does not rule out “evacuating Bordeaux completely”, the mayor minimizes it.

With thousands of donors of clothing and food for the fire refugees and offers of accommodation, the mayor asked the population to be attentive “to the messages that are officially disseminated.”

“Everything is prepared so that the reception of refugees occurs in the best conditions,” said the mayor.

Mayors across the country jumped in to help, including providing financial support to town halls affected by the fire.

“In the face of multiple forest fires of unprecedented intensity affecting numerous departments this summer of 2026, hundreds of municipalities are suffering an exceptional tragedy,” laments the Association of Mayors of France (AMF) in a press release.

The AMF urges “municipalities and inter-municipal authorities of metropolitan France and its overseas territories to provide financial support as soon as possible for emergency operations underway or in preparation, as well as for the necessary long-term support phase.”

The union denounced that the firefighters fighting the fire in Gironde are poorly equipped against gas and carcinogenic particles that produces fire. The masks they have are not enough to filter out the particles.

Bordeaux airport is closed and is being protected. Many of the defense, ammunition and missile companies, such as the Dassault Group, Thales and Safran, are located in its vicinity, and serious security measures have been implemented around it.

This Monday there are no TGV trains running south of Bordeaux, except for those serving Agen and Toulouse. The A63 motorway remains closed in both directions between Bordeaux and Bayonne due to forest fires affecting southwestern France, according to the SNCF.

On the railway network, Bordeaux is the terminal station for all TGV trains bound for Arcachon, Hendaye, Bayonne or Biarritz, according to SNCF Voyageurs. Regarding intraregional transport, TER regional trains do not run in the area between Arcachon, Bordeaux and Morcenx, north of Dax. The Intercités Paris-Tarbes and Tarbes-Paris night trains have also been cancelled.

The fires in this region have already caused serious damage. The numbers are staggering.. At the moment, the historic fire that is ravaging Gironde has caused the evacuation of 13,000 companies, according to figures announced this Monday morning by the Minister of Economy, Roland Lescure. This figure, which only corresponds to this department, is provisional, since the fire is not yet controlled.

Insurance companies are ready to compensate for damage and house fires, and will be in charge of paying for the relocation of people who have lost everything. In France, Housing insurance is mandatory. They will have to pay for the accommodation of 250,000 people for at least three weeks. The population of Gironde, Landes and Var will be relocated and their expenses paid.

Faced with this dramatic situation, insurers have decided to act to help. All insurance companies have agreed to cover the relocation costs of evacuees. The information was communicated to the minister through France Assureurs, the federation of companies in the sector.

Coverage for relocation expenses typically only applies to people whose homes have been damaged. “All French insurers have committed to ensuring that all displaced people receive reimbursement for their relocation expenses, according to the terms of their contract, regardless of whether their home is damaged or not,” announced the Minister of Economy and Finance.

Those affected by the fires will have until “at least August 31” to notify their insurer of the damage, compared to the usual five days, Roland Lescure added.

To monitor the evolution of the situation, the Minister of Economy and Finance announced that a daily meeting will be held with economic agents.

Although the night from Sunday to Monday produced a relative stabilization of the fire, The coming days are a cause for growing concern. All conditions are in place for “a resurgence of the fire,” warned Philippe de Gonneville, mayor of Lège-Cap-Ferret, whose town has been affected since the beginning of the disaster, on Monday morning. The mayor therefore foresees only a “temporary calm.”

In less than three hours last Friday, Florian Illien, 26, developed an app that connects victims of the fires with residents willing to welcome them. As of Monday, there were already 45 accommodation options for families and their pets available online.

Another wave runs through the Gironde region: a wave of solidarity. Since the start of the fires in Lège-Cap-Ferret, which have already caused the evacuation of 220,000 people and the devastation of 42,000 hectares, social networks have been flooded with offers of accommodation, mutual aid and notices of lost pets. This spontaneous but dispersed mobilization means that publications appear so quickly that it is sometimes impossible to find them.

Last Friday, Florian Illien, sitting in front of his computer, lamented the same situation: “I saw a lot of posts, especially in Facebook groups, but they were completely scattered,” he said.

This 26-year-old from Bordeaux, who works in the renewable energy sector, then launched his code editor. In just two or three hours, he created Alabri, a platform designed to centralize accommodation offers and requests. “I am very involved in the IT and artificial intelligence sector. I couldn’t sit idly by: I wanted to prevent aid from being wasted,” he explained.

The fire that rages in Gironde it has already devastated 42,000 acresfour times the area of ​​Paris. It is the most devastating fire that has hit France in the last fifty years.