Tens of thousands in France flee burning holiday haven

LÈGE-CAP-FERRET, FRANCE - Famous as a summer getaway for the likes of French actors Marion Cotillard and Jean Dujardin, the Cap Ferret peninsula has turned into a disaster zone due to wildfires, with more than 35,000 people evacuated by road and sea.

“It’s a disaster, it’s horrible,” Jean Goncalves told AFP on the early morning of July 24, a T-shirt tied around his face.

The 54-year-old, who has lived in Lège-Cap-Ferret for 30 years, fled his home after watching his neighbour’s wooden house catch fire.

The streets were deserted, metal shutters drawn and houses closed up, as wildfires drove residents and tourists away during the peak summer season.

“There’s not a soul around,” Cecile Maumy said the the Cap-Ferret ferry terminal. “It feels like the Covid period. It’s unbelievable.”

France has been battered by three heatwaves since May, part of increasingly frequent extreme weather episodes linked to climate change, causing thousands of excess deaths, drying up rivers and fuelling wildfires.

The wildfire broke out on July 22 in the village of Saumos close to the renowned Medoc vineyards.

Moving rapidly through dense pine forests, the blaze spread to the Cap-Ferret peninsula, a popular tourist destination on the Atlantic coast long favoured by wealthy French families and known for sand dunes and oyster shacks.

Many French A-listers, drawn to the understated charm of Cap-Ferret over the glitz of the French Riviera, spend their vacations there or own homes on the peninsula.

Residents have described scenes like a “war-zone”, while the regional prefect Sophie Brocas called the blaze an “XXL wildfire, unpredictable and voracious”.

No fatalities have been reported, but more than 50 homes have been destroyed, along with a campsite.

Faced with the advancing flames, officials ordered the evacuation of the entire peninsula and its 40,000 summer residents.

Most people have left by car through the peninsula’s single road, while hundreds were also ferried out by boats as part of the evacuation plan, the first time it has been activated after it was put together following devastating fires in the region in 2022.

“Everything was handled smoothly,” said David Lafforgue, a Cap-Ferret shopkeeper and local elected official. “Suitcases were ready, and people remained calm.”

Catastrophic

But he said he was worried about what comes next.

“Economically, it’s catastrophic,” he said. “We go from everything to nothing.”

“July 20 to August 20 is the peak of our season. We don’t know whether our seasonal workers will come back or whether our customers will return.”

Some people have been evacuated to the seaside town of Andernos.

Maria Lalanne, a 90-year-old resident of Lège-Cap-Ferret with no family, was still in shock. She left her hearing aid and glasses behind at home.

“I have heart disease, blood pressure issues, eye problems. I don’t know how long this will last. I don’t know what has happened to my house,” she said.

Firefighters spray water along the edge of a forest during a wildfire near the town of Lège-Cap-Ferret, in southwestern France on July 24. PHOTO: AFP

In Andernos, authorities are now preparing for a possible evacuation of the town itself.

“We are welcoming people from the peninsula who have been evacuated to our reception centres, and now we have been instructed to evacuate those centres as well,” said Jean-Francois Garric, the town’s deputy mayor.

Evacuee Julie Boisvert had been staying in the village of Le Porge when her family was forced to leave.

She said she had begun to feel “surrounded” by the advancing flames.

“The gendarmes knocked on every door,” said Boisvert, adding they left by car with their two children, aged five and two.

A vendor pushes a cart on the beach of Moutchic in Lacanau, southwestern France on July 24, as clouds of smoke rise into the sky from a wildfire. PHOTO: AFP

“We had already packed suitcases just in case, but they gave us only two minutes and carefully checked that nobody was still inside the house,” she said.

Firefighters were also battling another major fire near the town of Biscarrosse, southwest of Bordeaux.

The fire, which broke out on July 23, forced the evacuation of 18,000 people, said Gilles Clavreul, the prefect of Landes.

“We have never experienced anything like this,” he said. AFP