France orders total evacuation of Cap Ferret peninsula as wildfire spreads

The Guardian reports that authorities in south-western France have ordered the total evacuation of the Cap Ferret peninsula, a popular Atlantic-coast holiday spot, as an intense and highly unpredictable wildfire bears down on the area. According to the interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, the blaze had burned more than ten thousand hectares — roughly twenty-four thousand seven hundred acres — by Friday morning, with around forty thousand people already evacuated or about to flee, including thousands of tourists from campsites and rental homes. The Guardian says residents are being moved out by both land and sea as the fire continues to advance.

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