The French Government has deployed military experts to protect missile and rocket-propellant plants west of Bordeaux, as a wildfire in the Gironde department has forced more than 250,000 people from their homes.
The Ministry of the Armed Forces said experts and resources had been sent to secure industrial sites in the path of the blaze, which began near the village of Saumos on July 22 and has burned some 42,000 hectares.
The belt of land around Bordeaux-Mérignac airport holds one of France’s densest concentrations of defence and space manufacturing. ArianeGroup operates four sites there, among them two at Saint-Médard-en-Jalles where propellant is loaded into M51 ballistic missiles and one at Le Haillan producing engines for the Ariane 6 launcher.
Both communes have been evacuated, along with Martignas-sur-Jalle, Saint-Jean-d’Illac and areas of Mérignac and Eysines. Roxel France, a subsidiary of missile maker MBDA, has a plant at Saint-Médard-en-Jalles, while Dassault, Safran and Thales operate close by.
ArianeGroup said it was in permanent contact with local and national authorities. Emergency crews spent the night digging firebreaks and clearing ground around sensitive installations.
Bordeaux itself remains outside the evacuation zone. “We’re very vigilant. We’re ready for anything,” mayor Thomas Cazenave said, putting the flames between 25 and 30 kilometres from the city.
Gironde prefect Sophie Brocas ruled out any return to the evacuated communes until the fire is contained and said businesses there would stay shut. She warned that temperatures of between 38C and 40C were forecast from July 28.
Some 2,500 firefighters, 1,500 soldiers and 1,200 police officers and gendarmes have been mobilised, backed by 18 aircraft and helicopters. The Gironde prefecture said 84 firefighters had been treated for injuries and at least 240 homes destroyed.
A separate fire in the neighbouring Landes department has displaced a further 30,000 people. France activated the EU Civil Protection Mechanism on July 5 and has since sought more help, with the European Commission mobilising rescEU aircraft from Croatia, Portugal, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Spain, where the burnt area has outpaced last year, has evacuated about 116,000 people.
Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said 115,000 hectares had burned across France since the start of the year, a record, with more than 13,000 fires recorded. President Emmanuel Macron chaired an interministerial crisis meeting on July 27, while economy minister Roland Lescure and trade minister Serge Papin gathered tourism, energy, telecoms and insurance representatives at Bercy to weigh the economic damage.
