Gironde Wildfire Declared Contained After Week-Long Battle; Most Evacuees Return Home

Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez announced the Gironde wildfire west of Bordeaux was "contained," meaning the flames were no longer spreading, after more than a week of firefighting across roughly 42,000 hectares (420 km², about four times the size of Paris) of pine forest. Of the roughly 220,000 people evacuated at the peak of the crisis, about 198,000 had been allowed to return home by August 1, though the Cap Ferret peninsula remained largely evacuated due to buried hot spots that could reignite along some 240 km of active fire edge. The blaze killed two firefighters and destroyed more than 200 homes, making it France's largest wildfire since 1949 and the country's largest peacetime evacuation. New fires erupted the same day in the Var region of southern France and in Greece.