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Fires rage in France and Spain as heatwave returns · THE DAILY BRIEF

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  Speaker 1: President Emmanuel MARCN says wild fires raging near Bordeau are
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  Speaker 1: the most severe facing France since the Second World War.
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  Speaker 1: He has promised to commit every available resource to contain
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  Speaker 1: the flames, but time is running out. Another heat wave
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  Speaker 1: is setting in, with temperatures forecasts to reach close to
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  Speaker 1: forty degrees this week and no rain on the horizon
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  Speaker 1: until Friday at the earliest. The fire close to the
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  Speaker 1: borderaugh didn't gain ground overnight, but remains unpredictable and dangerous.
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  Speaker 1: So this here is a live tracker of the fire
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  Speaker 1: provided by European authorities. The flames are only about nine
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  Speaker 1: miles or fifteen kilometers from the city's outskirts. Now across
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  Speaker 1: the border in Spain, residents living in towns near Madrid
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  Speaker 1: are watching on with fear, with more extreme heat threatening
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  Speaker 1: to complicate efforts to control the blaze, burning around thirty
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  Speaker 1: one miles or fifty kilometers west of the capitol. One
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  Speaker 1: hundred and sixty thousand people have been evacuated from the
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  Speaker 1: affected parts of Spain and France. Our correspondent Gwinloyder Censorsish
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  Speaker 1: reports from the Giron region near border.
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  Speaker 2: For days, wildfires have raged in the southwest of France.
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  Speaker 2: For weary firefighters here, these Canadian aircraft provide welcome relief.
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  Speaker 3: These are very fast, the full fire very fast.
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  Speaker 2: Most towns and villages in this area are almost deserted.
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  Speaker 2: The blaze now burns within ten miles of the city
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  Speaker 2: of Bordeaux. The fires are raging in this rural area,
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  Speaker 2: flames occasionally leaping into the air. You're able to see
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  Speaker 2: them several feet into the air. Thick black smoke rising
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  Speaker 2: as well sticking in the back of your throat. Wildfires
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  Speaker 2: aren't uncommon in this area near Bordeaux. Way Marerid from
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  Speaker 2: Wales originally has lived for the past sixteen years.
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  Speaker 4: And we're going to take the kids and move for
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  Speaker 4: the north, out of reach of the smoke and the
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  Speaker 4: pud or as far as we can. We're lucky enough
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  Speaker 4: to have somewhere where we can go so that we
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  Speaker 4: just get especially the cages, get them away and get
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  Speaker 4: them too some cleanery.
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  Speaker 2: French President Emmanuel Macran has to day been meeting the
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  Speaker 2: teams fighting the flames, which could take months to put out.
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  Speaker 5: We must understand we are facing a completely unprecedented wildfire.
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  Speaker 5: The situation we are dealing with today is the most
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  Speaker 5: severe we've ever recorded, the toughest since the Second World War.
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  Speaker 2: Across the border in Spain to the situation is dire.
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  Speaker 2: What's been called the biggest wildfire in the region's history
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  Speaker 2: burns near Madrid. There's no shortage of dry vegetation for
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  Speaker 2: it to consume, thanks to successive heat waves after a
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  Speaker 2: wet winter. Today, however, mostly thanks to the weather, the
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  Speaker 2: situation has improved. Officials the pace of the flames have
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  Speaker 2: slowed in Valencia, but as you can see, the fires
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  Speaker 2: are still very much active and the government says the
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  Speaker 2: next two days will be crucial on whether they can
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  Speaker 2: be brought under control.
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  Speaker 6: Genuis from next to Theionists. This is the new reality. Summers
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  Speaker 6: are becoming increasingly difficult, destructive and therefore deadly.
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  Speaker 2: In Spain as in France, hot dry weather's forecast for
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  Speaker 2: the coming days. The fear here is that an already
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  Speaker 2: difficult situation could become catastrophic.
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  Speaker 1: That was a BBC's Gwyn Loader reporting there. Well, let's
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  Speaker 1: go live to Paris now and speak to our correspondence,
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  Speaker 1: Hugh Scofield and Hugh. Today is important for firefighters. They're
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  Speaker 1: ahead of temperatures rising later on Thursday.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, there's been a window of thirty six forty eight
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  Speaker 3: hours since Sunday evening in which firefighters have been able
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  Speaker 3: to not get the upper hand, at least stop the
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  Speaker 3: progress of the fire. I mean very noticeably. What we're
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  Speaker 3: not seeing now those huge billowing clouds which are so
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  Speaker 3: cataclysmic and apocalyptic that we saw on Saturday Sunday. Now
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  Speaker 3: it's still out of control in the sense that they
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  Speaker 3: don't know what's going to happen. There are embers burning,
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  Speaker 3: smoldering small fires here there everywhere, which could, if the
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  Speaker 3: conditions worsen, turn once again into a great, big conflagration.
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  Speaker 3: But right now it's not that kind of conflagration that
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  Speaker 3: we saw before. So the task is to stop it
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  Speaker 3: returning to that state. That's why for the last thirty
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  Speaker 3: six hours they've been using this window to create fire breaks.
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  Speaker 3: That means clearing big swathes of paths through the forest
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  Speaker 3: so that the fire leaped from a to b, clearing
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  Speaker 3: brush and so on, in the hope that when there
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  Speaker 3: are these fires they can be contained. There will be
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  Speaker 3: more fires. It will, you know, keep cropping up because
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  Speaker 3: the smoldering embers are in rich territory for new outbreaks.
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  Speaker 3: It's dry, it's tinder, drivers embers everywhere. But the hope
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  Speaker 3: is that they will be able to douse these new
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  Speaker 3: outbreaks as quickly as possible in order to prevent it
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  Speaker 3: all coming together and being whipped up into another firestorm
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  Speaker 3: like we saw earlier on Hugh.
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  Speaker 1: Thank you. BBC's Hesco filled in Paris there. Well, let's
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  Speaker 1: now speak to British holidaymaker Grant Thomas. We evacuated Cap
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  Speaker 1: Fury with his family last week and is now safe
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  Speaker 1: in ill Dourray near La Rochelle. Thank you for joining
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  Speaker 1: us on BBC News. So first of all, just describe
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  Speaker 1: your evacuation for us, because we can look at some
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  Speaker 1: pictures that you sent us. We showed you driving right
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  Speaker 1: past the fires.
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  Speaker 6: Yeah, thank you and good morning Katherine. Yeah.
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  Speaker 7: The the evacuation was quite an intense process. We were
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  Speaker 7: rudely awoken, that's all right, terminology suddenly at about two
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  Speaker 7: forty five in the morning by the Emergency Evacuation Service
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  Speaker 7: in French.
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  Speaker 6: We midly packed the car. It was quite.
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  Speaker 7: Eerie, it was dark, there was a smoke smell in
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  Speaker 7: the air, and there were other families also evacuating the
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  Speaker 7: houses at the same time and actually saw from the pictures.
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  Speaker 7: Then we drove up the sort of D one O six,
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  Speaker 7: which is the main route out of Capfaret towards Bordeaux,
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  Speaker 7: and as we turned the corner near Legure, which is
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  Speaker 7: one of the towns that was badly hit by the fire,
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  Speaker 7: we obviously saw these flames in the in the sort
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  Speaker 7: of on the side of the car as we drove past,
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  Speaker 7: on the left hand side.
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  Speaker 6: So quite intense.
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  Speaker 7: But I must say the evacuation worked for us relatively well,
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  Speaker 7: and we were kind of through the fire by about
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  Speaker 7: four point thirty in the morning and heading away to safety.
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  Speaker 1: And just tell us about the days before. How did
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  Speaker 1: you start to realize that the fire was getting closer
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  Speaker 1: and closer to you and your family?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah?
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  Speaker 7: Sure, I mean we noticed the first evidence of the
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  Speaker 7: fire on Wednesday afternoon. We were coming off the beach
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  Speaker 7: on the Atlantic side and there was this column of
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  Speaker 7: gray smoke in the distance, and we immediately assessed that
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  Speaker 7: that was some.
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  Speaker 6: Sort of wildfire of some description.
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  Speaker 7: But it really sort of hit home on Thursday when
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  Speaker 7: we went to the basin side the other beach on
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  Speaker 7: the other side of the headland, and that the column
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  Speaker 7: had turned into essentially a cloud, you know, probably four
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  Speaker 7: or five times as wide, and we started really listening
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  Speaker 7: to social media and looking at Facebook, and we realized
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  Speaker 7: very quickly that this was more than just you know,
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  Speaker 7: a small forest fire.
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  Speaker 1: And tell us about how people in the area were affected,
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  Speaker 1: families and businesses as well.
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  Speaker 7: Yeah, look, I mean, you know, when we sort of
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  Speaker 7: realized it was getting bad, and on Thursday afternoon, we
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  Speaker 7: kind of walked back to our town and it was
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  Speaker 7: very clear immediately that it was quite People had obviously
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  Speaker 7: got wind of the challenge, and certainly the locals that
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  Speaker 7: I think left in many cases, being as there's only
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  Speaker 7: one road out of that particular part of France, so
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  Speaker 7: they evacuated quite quickly.
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  Speaker 6: So its eerie. It was quiet.
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  Speaker 7: There were a few people still around, but certainly not
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  Speaker 7: as busy as it was. There was smoke in the air,
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  Speaker 7: as I think some of your correspondents had described, and
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  Speaker 7: there was also ash falling falling from the sky across
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  Speaker 7: across our property.
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  Speaker 6: So it was a kind of a weird feeling catterin enough.
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  Speaker 1: I'm honest, Grant, thank you so much for taking the
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  Speaker 1: time to speak to us. That's Grant Thomas speaking to
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  Speaker 1: us from Ill Douray, near La Rousseelle