The numbers moved fast enough that the outlets covering them do not agree, which is part of the picture.
On Saturday, wildfires across southwestern Europe forced more than 267,000 people from their homes: roughly 197,000 in France, concentrated around Bordeaux, and about 70,000 across Spain's Madrid region and Avila province [1]. Euronews put the totals lower, at about 167,000 in France and more than 60,000 in Spain [2].
The direction is not in dispute even where the count is. Spain has reported 14 dead and 10 missing, and has declared a national emergency [1].
In France, some 98,000 hectares have burned - a figure Interior Minister Laurent Nunez called a historic record [1] - and evacuation orders went out Saturday for the Bordeaux suburbs of Le Haillan, Eysines and Merignac [2], which is to say for the edges of a city of a quarter of a million people.
France has appealed for European Union assistance [1], the step a national fire service takes when its own capacity is spent.
Two firefighters were killed at Merignac on Tuesday, and Euronews recorded 32,700 hectares burned in the Gironde department this week alone [2]. What that produces, on a Saturday in July, is a quarter of a million people who slept somewhere other than home.
