France and Spain wildfires: Witnesses describe ‘wall of fire’, fear and anxiety

Chris de Abreu, who is from Kent but works in France and has a flat in Bordeaux, described how “at the weekend the city was engulfed in smoke and the sun was disappearing behind”, with an “orange filter” appearing over the city.

Although de Abrey says he’s not too worried about his apartment across the river, he said, “I can see a lot of people are worried about what’s coming.”

Elsewhere, Rachel Hanberry told BBC Radio 5 Live that her beach house in Biscarrosse Plage, 63km (40 miles) from Bordeaux, was close to the city’s evacuation center.

“Everybody came here on Thursday night,” she said. “People had nowhere to go. We offered our homes to people.”

The community there has “lost a lot,” she added. “The stress and anxiety you feel as a person living here is enormous.”

700 km away, in Cotignac, in the southeast of France, Jo Barnes and her family returned home on Saturday, after four days of being displaced after a fire quickly swept through their property.

“A wall of orange flame came roaring up the mountain,” Barnes said. “Friday afternoon, the fire returned to our area … We have a fuel tank here, 10 meters behind our house, everything was amazing.”

Although the surrounding hillside was blackened and burned, the town of Cotignac was unscathed and the Barnes family home was intact.