Europe's wildfire emergency showed signs of shifting on Saturday, with conditions improving across much of western Europe while a new and volatile front developed in Greece. Gale-force winds in Greece drove flames through a seaside resort area, forcing approximately 300 people to flee by sea and creating significant challenges for aerial firefighting crews.
The situation has evoked grim memories for the country, recalling the 2018 wildfire in the seaside community of Mati near Athens, which claimed 104 lives and remains the deadliest wildfire in Europe this century.
The fire in Greece broke out on Friday near the coastal village of Agios Vasileios. According to Theodore Giannaros, a wildfire meteorologist at the National Observatory of Athens, the affected area is estimated at 40 to 50 square kilometers, or roughly 15 to 19 square miles, though authorities have yet to release an official figure for the burned land.
Local resident and farmer Minas Tzortzanis described the destruction as total, mourning the loss of a pristine forest.
The response effort involves specialized forest-fire teams, international support from France and Romania, and a fleet of 19 water-dropping planes and 11 helicopters. However, Climate Crisis and Civil Protection Minister Evangelos Tournas noted that extreme turbulence caused by very strong winds has prevented some aircraft from operating effectively or approaching the fires closely enough to make drops.
New blazes have emerged elsewhere in Greece, including a fire east of Nafpaktos that triggered evacuation alerts for at least four villages. The regional crisis follows a period of extreme weather across Europe, which the European Union’s Copernicus climate service identifies as the fastest-warming continent on Earth, heating at more than twice the global average since the 1980s.
Prolonged drought and rising temperatures have left vegetation exceptionally dry, making it more combustible and prone to intense, fast-moving fires.
Meanwhile, in southwestern France, the situation in the Gironde region has stabilized. Interior Minister Laurent Nunez stated that the major blaze, which burned 420 square kilometers of pine forest west of Bordeaux—an area four times the size of Paris—is under control.
Nearly 198,000 people have been allowed to return home following what may be the largest peacetime evacuation in the country's history.
While the fire is contained within its perimeter, authorities have not yet declared it fully fixed, as buried hot spots and active sectors remain a concern.
Lt. Col. Eric Pitault noted that crews have utilized tactical burns to manage the fire's edge, which spans 240 kilometers. Some areas, such as the Cap Ferret peninsula, remain largely evacuated due to the risk of flare-ups that could cut off road access and trap returning residents.
In the southeastern Var region, 1,500 firefighters continue to battle a separate blaze. Defensive lines around the Gros Bessillon fire held overnight and no additional ground burned, Var Prefect Simon Babre told French media. The blaze had been declared fixed earlier in the week before mistral gusts revived embers on Friday, sending it racing through dry hills in temperatures approaching 42 C (108 F).
It remained active Saturday, with about 2,500 people still unable to return home. The fire's sudden return, according to Babre, defies understanding. Across France, 20 departments were under orange heat warnings on Saturday, with eight facing high forest-fire risk.
Major fires in Spain were also no longer advancing, and Portugal's main blaze was under control. A second French fire stopped expanding overnight after racing across 10 square kilometers in six hours on Friday—a speed described by the prefecture as faster than a horse at full gallop—but it remained active Saturday with 2,500 people unable to return.
For those returning to the Gironde fire zone, the path to recovery is difficult. Matthieu Plessis, a 40-year-old mechanic from Le Porge, returned to find his family home of seven generations reduced to ruins. The fire destroyed his home and the machinery for his bicycle-repair business.
He had to force open the property's gate because the key had burned, and only a chimney and twisted metal frames remained. Despite the loss, Plessis expressed a desire to focus on supporting others in his community as they navigate the aftermath of the disaster.
Just over a week earlier, smoke had turned the afternoon almost to night as flames raced along both sides of the road. Now the 40-year-old mechanic drove through blackened forest and struggled to identify what had once stood there.
"There are little details here and there that I recognize, but otherwise everything is unrecognizable," Plessis said. "You don't even know what was here anymore, or who lived where."
