A huge wildfire raged in southern France on Wednesday evening forcing scores of people to be evacuated, emergency services said.
Hundreds of firefighters mobilised to battle the blaze in the Herault and Aude départements, fuelled by drought and strong winds.
It came a year after major blazes in the Corbières region and days after a deadly heatwave across much of Europe, with another one forecast.
The map from Google Maps shows the area of impacted by the wildfire as of Thursday morning.
Herault / Aude wildfire. Image: Google Maps.By late evening the fire had covered 800 hectares, according to the prefecture.
“The fire is contained at times,” a source in the prefecture told AFP around 11:00pm (2100 GMT), but “it is not under control.”
Conditions on the ground were difficult for firefighters, with no access routes in the hilly terrain. Water-dumping aircraft were being used.
Temperatures of around 30C combined with strong wind gusts drove the spread of the fire through low, very dry vegetation.
About 200 people were evacuated or confined in the communes of Pouzols‑Minervois and Mailhac, officials said.
“The smoke was so thick, so suffocating that firefighters told us to leave,” said one evacuated woman, Danielle, 99, from Pouzols.
The flames spread across 900 hectares in the Aude département and 100 in the Hérault département.
Firefighters in the Bouches-du-Rhône department were still battling Thursday morning to bring under control a wildfire that has burned 260 hectares north of Marseille, after successfully containing a second fire overnight.
Hundreds of people who were evacuated during the night have now been authorised to return to their homes in La Fare-les-Oliviers, a small village caught between the two fires at Lançon-Provence and Rognac. The second fire was brought under control after burning 40 hectares.
Météo-France map for départements on fire alert for Thursday. Six départements in the south of France were placed on a red alert for ‘forest fires’ on Thursday and Friday.
