‘It felt like being in a disaster movie’: uncertainty after evacuation from France’s Gironde wildfire

Evacuees at the exhibition centre in Bordeaux. Photograph: Manon Cruz/Reuters View image in fullscreen Evacuees at the exhibition centre in Bordeaux. Photograph: Manon Cruz/Reuters ‘It felt like being in a disaster movie’: uncertainty after evacuation from France’s Gironde wildfire Residents describe their fear as they were forced to leave their homes because of the ‘extremely intense’ blaze S itting in their suburban apartment in Mérignac on the outskirts of Bordeaux, Krishma, an interpreter, and her husband, Nassir, first felt a sense of dread when a strange black cloud turned the sky dark in the middle of the day. Then a bitter burning smell filled the air outside. “The sky changed colour. It seemed like a cloud but it was smoke covering the sun – it wasn’t a natural phenomenon. It didn’t seem real,” said Nassir, an English literature graduate from Kabul who has been living in France for seven years. “We couldn’t breathe easily, you could feel it in your lungs.” The acrid smell, which at first seemed like burning rubber then unmistakably like wood smoke, was blowing on the wind from the massive wildfire in Gironde in south-western France. The blaze has torn through 42,000 hectares, an area four times the size of Paris, causing one of the biggest devastations of land in France since the second world war. The government said on Monday that although the fire had stopped growing, it was still blazing and a new heatwave this week could make it harder to fight. Nassir and Krishma had slept at the exhibition centre for three nights and did not know when they would be allowed home. Photograph: Angelique Chrisafis/The Guardian As authorities carried out one of the biggest evacuations in modern French history, Krishma and Nassir were among 220,000 people ordered to flee their homes in Gironde. Many people were evacuated from wooded areas directly hit by fire, where at least 240 homes were destroyed. But in an unprecedented move, tens of thousands more were ordered by police to evacuate from more built-up, urban streets as the fire reached 9 miles (15km) from the outer edge of Bordeaux’s vast suburban area. Krishma and Nassir had to evacuate their suburban street at midnight on Friday. With their two children aged 10 and eight, they quickly packed toothbrushes, toys, one change of clothes and personal documents into their car. On Monday afternoon, they were sitting on camp beds among hundreds of people sheltering in a hangar at Bordeaux’s exhibition centre. They had slept there for three nights and did not know when they would be allowed home. The fire had not reached their residential area, but with the French government warning that the blaze was “extremely intense and unpredictable”, authorities would not yet allow a return, they said. View image in fullscreen A woman and her dog at the emergency shelter. Photograph: Caroline Blumberg/AP The couple’s main feeling was great sadness to see the Gironde forest destroyed. Krishma said: “When we were in Afg