PARIS, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News / WAM – 01st Aug, 2026) France‘s largest wildfire since 1949 has been brought under control, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said, more than a week since the fire erupted in the Gironde department near the southwestern city of Bordeaux.
“The fire in under control, it’s no longer progressing,” Nunez said as quoted by AFP, adding that there were still active fires in some areas.
Firefighters on Saturday had also managed to stem the advance of a new fast-moving blaze in the Var department in the country’s southeast.
France has for weeks been battling wildfires after a series of deadly heatwaves that have dried up riverbeds and vegetation, in extreme weather events scientists have linked to human-made climate change.
In the southwest of the country, France‘s largest wildfire since 1949 remained contained more than a week after it erupted.
The inferno ripped through 42,000 hectares – an area larger than the US city of Detroit – of pine forest and destroyed around 240 homes along the Atlantic coastline near the winemaking capital of Bordeaux.
Most of the 220,000 people who had been evacuated from the flames had gone home.
The total area of land burnt so far this year in France – 92,000 hectares – is the largest on record for any year over the past 20 years, according to satellite data from the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS).
