Some of the hundreds of thousands of people who had been evacuated from their homes in the worst-hit areas of France and Spain are now being gradually allowed to return, and authorities say the fires are starting to calm down.
The number of wildfire occurrences is as follows.
Approximately 224,000 people have been evacuated in France’s Gironde department since the French wildfires began, the French fire brigade announced today.
About 4,000 of them were yesterday ordered to leave Lacanau, a popular tourist destination in the Gironde department, according to French public broadcaster France Info.
Authorities announced yesterday that around 60,000 people from three towns in the Gironde department, just a few miles from the Bordeaux city limits, will be allowed to return home.
French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez announced on Sunday that another 36,000 people had been evacuated from Rand and around 3,000 people in Var could be told to leave their homes.
Nunez said this could be France’s largest peacetime evacuation.
By Sunday, about 42,000 hectares of land had been burned in the Gironde region, Nuñez said. He said around 4,800 hectares had been burnt in the Rand by yesterday evening.
French President Emmanuel Macron said earlier this week: “The situation we face today is the most severe we have ever recorded and the most severe since World War II.”
“More than 160,000 hectares have already been burned and the season is not over yet,” he said.
According to Atmo France, a network of air quality monitoring associations, only three out of 45 regions across France have “average” air quality.
At least 63,152 people in Spain have been forced to evacuate their homes in the country’s central regions of Madrid, Toledo and Ávila, the Interior Ministry said on Monday. But yesterday, authorities announced that at least 24,000 people had been allowed to return.
The total area burned in the Madrid region alone is approximately 34,000 hectares, Madrid Community President Isabel Díaz Ayuso said yesterday. The Burgohondo wildfire, the largest in Spain’s history, has burned more than 50,000 hectares (123,500 acres) in southern Spain’s Avila province.
CNN’s Issy Ronald, Pierre P. Bailin, Pau Mosquera, Joseph Ataman and Hira Humayun contributed to this report.
