Bordeaux airport fire leaves two firefighters dead as France’s summer of blazes worsens

A fire near an airport is the kind of event that reminds everyone, briefly and unhelpfully, that nature does not care about timetables. In south-west France, two firefighters died while battling a blaze near Bordeaux-Mérignac Airport, turning a local emergency into another grim marker of a summer already dominated by fire.

According to French media reports, the blaze began as a brush fire near one of the airport’s parking lots before spreading to a building. Passengers were seen getting off a plane as smoke rose nearby, while several flights scheduled to arrive at Bordeaux-Mérignac were delayed. About 100 firefighters, backed by specialist aircraft, were reported to be working to contain the fire.

France’s Interior Minister, Laurent Nuñez, said he had been informed of the deaths by officials in Gironde. Speaking in the National Assembly, he said he would travel to the department as soon as possible to oversee the firefighting effort. Gironde is one of several French departments hit by wildfires in recent days, after a series of unusual and prolonged heatwaves.

The Bordeaux fire was not an isolated incident. On Tuesday, another blaze broke out in the south-eastern Var department, in the commune of Pontevès. The PSFDF volunteer association, which monitors fires across France, said the fire was currently out of control and moving rapidly. It said 500 firefighters and rescuers had been deployed, and 150 people had already been evacuated.

The numbers are now large enough to lose their shock value, which is usually how a country discovers that its systems are being tested harder than they were designed to be. France has registered nearly 11,000 fires since the beginning of the year, and President Emmanuel Macron said last week that there had not been so many since World War Two. Satellite data from the European Forest Fire Information System shows that more than 42,000 hectares burned in France between January and mid-July, surpassing the previous record set in 2022.

The wider European picture is no comfort. The Copernicus Climate Change Service says Europe is warming twice as fast as the global average, which means more heatwaves, greater pressure on water supplies and more intense wildfires. Spain has already suffered major fires this summer, including one north of Madrid that destroyed 29,000 hectares and another in which at least 13 people were killed. France, for its part, is learning that a fire season can become a permanent administrative headache long before it becomes a political lesson.

Written by Freya Stensrud freya.stensrud@alpineweekly.com