Bordeaux's mayor,Thomas Cazenave, said the fire line was still holding, for now. French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez wasn't quite as calm about it,calling the overall situation difficult in a post on social media. Authorities have already moved roughly 220,000 people out of their homes across the southwest this week, and the flames have pushed into Cap Ferret, the beach town where half the region seems to spend its summers.France has thrown Canadair water bombers, helicopters and even a military cargo plane at the fire lines. It's the kind of week that makes wine country feel like something out of a disaster movie, if disaster movies smelled like smoke.Spain's fighting its own fire crisis right now, and it declared a national emergency after a wildfire near Valencia killed an elderly man,and down in the Gironde countryside, local farmers grabbed tractors and water tanks and drove out on their own to lend a hand. Pascal Roudier, 65, said he showed up because if it were his own village burning,he'd want someone else's neighbors to do the same.
That kind of help matters, because the numbers keep getting worse. July's average high in the Aquitaine region hit 32.2 degrees Celsius, which is 7.3 degrees above what's normal for the month going back to 1961,and Bordeaux, known for its vineyards and its steady stream of tourists headed to the Atlantic coast,sits right in the path if the wind shifts even a little. Nearly a quarter million people are already out of their homes,and nobody's saying when they can go back.
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