France evacuates thousands as pine forest fire rages

Le Porge, July 24: Smoke rose from crackling pine trees Thursday as a wildfire gained ground on the coast of southwestern France, forcing more than 10,000 tourists to evacuate camping sites and other holiday accommodation.

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

The blaze in Le Porge, just south of Medoc wine country, had ripped through 2,400 hectares -- an area twice the size of London's Heathrow airport -- since Wednesday, firefighters said.

No casualties had been reported or homes destroyed so far, they added.

Skies in the coastal village of Le Porge, near the city of Bordeaux, were orange early on Thursday morning.

Wisps of smoke rose from charred or crackling tree trunks between Le Porge and the village of Lege-Cap-Ferret to the south, AFP journalists said.

Helicopters made repeated runs over houses with shuttered windows, as fire trucks rushed up and down the road.

Patrick Martineau, 69, was among 12,000 people -- tourists, as well as hundreds of residents living on the edge of the forest -- who had to evacuate.

"Police came banging on the doors of all homes," he said.

"It's a bit scary, hard to take in," he added.

"When we bought a home here, we never thought there would be a fire risk." Some 700 firefighters have been battling the flames on land, while several firefighting planes have been dumping water from the sky since the blaze erupted around midday on Wednesday.

It then roared through the dense woodland, with flames soaring to 10 metres in some areas.

"We saw a huge cloud of black smoke spreading across the sky in the middle of the afternoon," Julie Leonard, a holiday maker from Bordeaux, told AFP on Wednesday. Le Porge mayor Martial Zaninetti and a resident said the fire appeared to have been started by a brush-clearing machine.

Police were looking into an accident that ignited the blaze.

Bernard Roche, a 75-year-old former lifeguard, evacuated his cabin in the woods on Wednesday.

"The forest has been particularly dry these past few days," he said.(AFP)