Firefighters in France have spent the weekend trying to save Bordeaux from an immense conflagration. On Monday morning, the city’s prefecture announced that the situation was ‘broadly stable’, although nine firefighters were injured on Sunday, bringing the total to 84 since the fire began on Wednesday.

More than 42,000 hectares have been lost to the fire and the flames are now nine miles from Bordeaux, France’s ninth biggest city with a population of 270,000. The city’s mayor, Thomas Cazenave, has said there are no plans to evacuate residents, but holidaymakers have been told to stay away.

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President Emmanuel Macron will chair a crisis meeting on Monday morning to discuss the fire that began when a contractor was clearing vegetation near power lines 22 miles west of Bordeaux. The authorities were alerted within minutes but the flames were already out of control by the time the first crews arrived. It has now become a ‘pyrocumulonimbus” – a huge fire thunderstorm driven by its own winds and lightning.

France has been subjected to one of the fiercest heatwaves........

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