EU nations scramble to aid France in battling "monstrous" wildfires

             In an unprecedented display of global unity, hundreds of firefighters from around the EU have been dispatched to France to assist in putting out wildfires.

 

The majority of them are stationed along a 26-mile (40 km) active fire-front in the southwest, where a "monstrous" fire is still destroying pine forests.

 

Early on Friday morning, German firemen and their vehicles arrived to assist in putting out the enormous Landiras fire in the Gironde and the Landes, south of Bordeaux, which had rekindled this week after consuming vast tracts of forest in July.

 

Along with teams from Poland, Austria, Greece, and Italy, Romanian firemen and more than 1,100 French firefighters worked to put out the fire. As more than 360 firemen arrived in trucks and aircraft, President Emmanuel Macron tweeted: "Our partners are coming to France's help against the fires. They have my gratitude. The solidarity of Europe is at work!

 

France has experienced the worst forest fires in years during this summer of high heat and drought. The Landiras fire in southwest France was compared by one local firefighter to "a sleeping monster that can wake at any gust of wind."

 

According to the French official television, 56,000 hectares of forest have burned in France since the year began, which is three times the yearly average over the past ten years. There have also been forest fires in northern areas that are not often affected by summer fires, such as Brittany, where Swedish firefighting planes were dispatched to assist.

 

The Landiras fire, France's largest fire, has burned more than 7,400 hectares of forest, according to authorities in the Gironde. Although the fire did not grow further during the night, they warned that there was still a "serious risk" of it doing so on Friday due to the high temperatures and dry weather anticipated. This would make fighting the fire more difficult.

 

Before being contained, the fire had already burned through 14,000 hectares in July, which was the driest month in France since 1961. However, it had never been completely put out and had continued to smolder in the peat-rich soil of the area before erupting once more this week in the tinder-dry pine forests.

 

The fire, which authorities believe may have been started intentionally, has burnt through 7,400 hectares since it erupted again on Tuesday, damaged or destroyed 17 homes, and driven 10,000 people from their homes, according to Lieut-Col Arnaud Mendousse of the Gironde fire and rescue service.