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The authorized returns announced Thursday covered nine
localities that had been evacuated. In all, more than 220,000
people were forced to flee their homes since last week.
Higher humidity, cooler temperatures and slight rain raised
hopes that Thursday could be a decisive step on the way to
vanquishing the fire.
Local officials reported a “rather calm" night, with a fire that
has not grown beyond the 42,000 hectares (about 162 sq. miles)
already affected. Fire crews remained at “total mobilization”
with 2,200 firefighters and over 20 aircraft.
Rain fell early Thursday in the city of Bordeaux to the east.
Sophie Brocas, the prefect for the Gironde region, expressed
some optimism that lower temperatures could help.
“If that's confirmed, we could foresee a return to a more normal
life for residents, but also for businesses that need to work,”
she told reporters late Wednesday.
Humidity reached 80% overnight but was expected to drop by
midday, authorities said. Some rainfall was expected along the
coast that “could reach the fire zone,” Gironde officials said
in a morning note.
Temperatures that peaked around 40 Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) a
day earlier were set to drop Thursday, topping out at 27 C (80
F) along the coast. An “orange” heat wave alert — the
second-highest level after “red” — was lifted shortly before
dawn.
The fires in the Bordeaux wine-growing, forested and
tourism-heavy region are among the blazes that have swept across
pockets of southern Europe in recent weeks, including Spain and
Greece.
On Thursday, firefighters were tackling multiple forest fires in
four of Turkey’s western provinces, the state-run Anadolu news
agency reported.
Blazes in touristic Mugla and Antalya and elsewhere raged
overnight as hot weather and strong winds gripped the region.
Residents were evacuated as teams with firefighting planes and
helicopters battled the fires.
A day earlier, authorities in neighboring Greece said three
firefighters had died on the island on Crete, as the wildfire
emergency stretched from the Atlantic coast to the eastern
Mediterranean.
At the peak of the evacuations, a third of a million people were
driven from homes and vacation sites in France and Spain.
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