Horses Gallop Through French Streets to Escape Wildfire Flames
Video footage of horses galloping away from flames and smoke has provided stark imagery of the wildfires that are ravaging southwestern France and parts of Spain.
Western Europe has recorded its hottest June on record and extreme heat is helping fires spread and intensify in France and Spain where blazes have forced roughly 330,000 people to evacuate their homes.
Capturing the drama of the blazes engulfing southwestern France is a clip showing horses running down a street in Biscarrosse, about 40 miles southwest of Bordeaux.
They had been released by equestrian center staff who thought that gave them a better chance of survival because smoke, heat, and flames made trailer evacuation impossible.
“We figured animal instinct would do the job,” Marine Champeval, manager of the Ecuries d’en Hill stables told Le Monde. She said that most of the center’s 100 horses had been evacuated to safety but about 10 were still out in the pastures.
“We decided to break down the fences and let them fend for themselves. We could not leave them trapped in the fields, after all. And it worked. The horses are all safe and sound.”
In a Facebook post, the stables said that the horses could not return to the site because its storage shed, shelters and fences have disappeared. “Before we can reintegrate our 100 horses, we will have a massive task of putting them back into operation…no income coming in,” the post said, advertising an online appeal which as of Tuesday had raised over 11,000 euros ($12,500). Newsweek has reached out to Ecuries d’en Hill for further comment.
Around 42,000 Hectares Burned
As of Tuesday, the clip of the fleeing horses dated July 23 had been viewed at least one million times as French authorities have spoken of how France is facing blazes of “exceptional intensity” in both Gironde and the south of the country.
Remi Lassoureille, who leads the forest fire efforts in the Gironde region, said around 42,000 hectares had burned in the past six days and 240 homes had been destroyed.
More than 2,000 firefighters continue to tackle the blazes which stabilized overnight although flare-ups were detected north of Le Porge and in dunes north of Cap Ferret.
Officials have warned that smoldering vegetation and an expected increase in temperatures could cause fresh outbreaks.
French President Emmanuel Macron said the wildfires raging near the city of Bordeaux were the “toughest since the Second World War” and that, “the situation we are dealing with is the most severe we have ever recorded.”
Nearly 4,000 people were evacuated on Tuesday from campsites, tourist residences, holiday villages, and leisure parks around Lacanau on France’s Atlantic coast.
Spain Declares National Emergency
Further south, authorities in Spain have evacuated some 79,000 people and ordered another 30,000 to remain in their homes after the government in Madrid declared a national emergency for wildfires for the first time.
There were concerns that two large fires that had at times come close to merging into a single mega-blaze in wooded hills west of Madrid.
There were also evacuations from another fire in the eastern province of Castellón while blazes in Ávila, west of Madrid, has become Spain’s largest on record, covering more than 193 square miles, according to the Spanish government.
So far this year, fires have burned 590 square miles in Spain—six times more than the same period last year.
