A wildfire is now nine miles away from the French city of Bordeaux, the mayor warned

The mayor of Bordeaux said one of the wildfires raging in France was now 15km (nine miles) from the southwestern city, and he was urging “all conditions”.

“We are preparing to accommodate more people if there are more evacuation orders,” Thomas Cazeneuve said.

Firefighters in the Gironde region were faced with an “unprecedented” situation. Interior Secretary Loren Nunez is fighting a fire that “has a life of its own.”

Some 220,000 people have fled west of Madrid, more than 100,000 in France and more than 100,000 in Spain.

Another intense heat wave on Tuesday could further hamper firefighting efforts.

Jerome Steffe, mayor of Cestas, south of Bordeaux, told the BBC it would be “the fire of the century”.

He described how 17,000 residents were evacuated from their town two days ago on the night of the fire. So far, 42,000 hectares (103,000 acres) of land have been burnt and 240 houses have been destroyed in the region, he said.

He added, “The situation in my city is very bad.”

Although the fire is not moving fast, crews say they have “only won a small battle,” stressing that the danger is flying embers or a sudden change in wind direction.

“We will put all our energy into creating defensive fire barriers,” he explained, but “we are all afraid to face this situation.”

French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu has warned that the country is in the midst of an unprecedented fire season.

In an X post on Monday, Lecornu wrote that “116,085 hectares (286,852 acres) have already burned and 13,566 fire starts have been recorded since January.”

According to the minister, nine out of 10 fires are human-caused and most of them are caused by carelessness: cigarette smoke, barbecues, careless work.

But “all these fires are not accidents” and “some are deliberately buried,” he said, adding that since July 6, 162 people have been arrested.

President Emmanuel Macron will now visit some of the firefighters in the Gironde to show his support for firefighters and other groups responding to fires.

Wildfires are burning in several other French regions, including the Var and Landes, as well as in Haute-Corse on the island of Corsica.