Wildfires raging around Bordeaux have driven between 5,000 and 6,000 evacuees into the city, though Mayor Thomas Cazenave said on Saturday that an evacuation of Bordeaux itself is not on the table, after a fast-moving blaze burned thousands of hectares and displaced tens of thousands in the Gironde department. A preventive evacuation order issued Friday now covers seven additional communes near Bordeaux, and arrivals are coming primarily from the Arcachon basin and other fire-threatened towns.
Cazenave said shelter capacity could be expanded from 5,000 to 10,000 places if the situation worsens.
Conditions in the city have grown grim. Local resident Isabele Buret described the smoke as a fog that turned the sun red, calling the scene an image of the apocalypse.