The mobile phone alert message marked “URGENT” came with a beeeeeeep in the dead of night.
“Evacuate now,” it said.
Suddenly awake, Morgane Bonichot scrambled. She grabbed her 9-year-old daughter, their rabbit and their dog but didn’t think to pack underwear.
The 40-year-old childcare worker found herself swept up in one of the biggest evacuations Europe has seen since World War II, forced with more than 220,000 other people to flee a monster wildfire in southwest France that has consumed an area four times the size of Paris and is defying a massive effort, involving a dozen countries, to bring it under control.
In hindsight, Bonichot thinks maybe she should have seen it coming.
Her daughter was in the blaze’s epicenter when it ignited last week, staying with an uncle in the midst of the pine forests, scrub and farmland being consumed by an inferno so virulent that it has morphed at times into a self-feeding firestorm, spitting lightning bolts that have sparked yet more flames.
Among the fire’s first evacuees, the daughter came home Friday. But with the flames spreading closer to her mother’s house west of Bordeaux, the daughter began preparing to flee again.
“She packed a suitcase with a lot of things, telling me, ‘Mum, you need to pack your suitcase because we’re going to have to be evacuated,’” Bonichot said.
Just hours later, at 2:47 am, she got the evacuation order for their town, Saint-Jean-d’Illac, on her phone.
“Forest fire underway,” it said.
All told, regional authorities have emptied two dozen towns and villages, some ravaged by fire. Others between the blaze and Bordeaux, including Saint-Jean-d’Illac, were evacuated as a precaution by government officials who say their priority is making sure that no lives are lost.
After a pause in evacuations Monday, when the fire’s spread stopped, they resumed Tuesday as flames flared again. An additional 4,000 people were moved from camping sites and holiday homes on the blaze’s northern edge, increasing the number of people forced to flee: more than 220,000 in the Gironde region alone. In Spain, historic wildfires have also forced tens of thousands of evacuations, bringing the number displaced in southwest Europe to roughly a third of a million.
“We left just like that,” Bonichot said. “My car had broken down, so neighbors had to drive me, along with my little girl and the animals. But one of the neighbors had a cat, and with the smell of the rabbit it became very complicated. So she had to drop me off.”
After a few days staying with Bonichot’s mother, they moved again, this time to a huge exhibition center in Bordeaux that city authorities have converted into a temporary shelter. It has camp beds, food, medical and veterinary services, clothes and volunteers doing what they can to make people comfortable.
The rabbit stays in a cage between the mother and daughter’s beds and the dog curls up in a large bowl. After a couple of days in the makeshift conditions, “I’m starting to become really exhausted,” Bonichot said.
But she doesn’t want to go home until she’s sure they won’t be evacuated again.
“I just can’t put my animals through another journey. The only trip they should have to make now is the one back home. Otherwise, for the rabbit, the stress could be fatal.”
“And my dog was dehydrated,” she said. “Here, there’s air conditioning and everything, so for the moment he’s doing a little better.”
Gironde authorities have said evacuees won’t be allowed back until the fire is contained, although on Tuesday they gave the go-ahead for returns to three suburbs of Bordeaux that haven’t had fires. It’s unknown when others might be allowed home. Fire trucks are still racing from one flare-up to the next, as aircraft drop water and retardant. Smoke clouds could be seen from kilometers away Tuesday.
Even when this inferno is beaten, the next one may not be far behind. Successive heat waves this year have turned European forests tinder-dry. They have also served as sobering reminders that human-caused climate change makes such extreme events increasingly likely.
“What really drives me crazy is that it makes me very worried about the future, because year after year it’s getting worse,” Bonichot said.
“It’s going to be a catastrophe.”
