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Comment by verzali | Hacker News Reader

The situation in Bordeaux right now feels close to apocalyptic. I left yesterday. Two hundred thousand people are evacuated, hundreds of homes destroyed, and the fire about 10 miles from the edge of the city.

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These train workers in northern Ontario had an intense view of a wildfire up close. I would have freaked out. They're acting like there's a cute animal on tracks.

see https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/train-cab-wildfir...

[edit] other video links in case the first link isn't viewable outside Canada.

see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwc16INKNq0 or https://www.youtube.com/shorts/qAerRqQQHAM

"ah, we're encased in flames here, eh?"

This video is so insane. They're in a combustion engine. I can not fathom why they survived let alone managed to drive out of this. Trains are not build for fire resistance.

I also left yesterday. I thought the mood was still surprisingly calm, considering that there was already enough smoke in the city to make it look like a foggy winter day and smell heavily of campfire.

Now I am wondering if my return flight from Bordeaux in a few days will actually happen. Currently the airport is still operating, although the surrounding area has been evacuated. It really looks apocalyptic there, though:

https://static.actu.fr/uploads/2026/07/aeroport-bordeaux-fum...

Had to evacuate a few years ago: south-west of France. We could see 20 meters high burning flames on the closest hill. But weirdly enough it wasn't the most terrifying: the most terrifying was driving back (to the same place) at night time, in the summer, and feeling like it was snowing... for ashes from a huge fire about 20 kilometers away (?) were raining down the sky and covering everything. I could hardly see the road and didn't understand at first what was happening.

It impacted the north of Bordeaux too. from Thursday to saturday, a lot of small fields/forest in Charente/Charente maritime started to catch fire because of the embers. The smoke was also so dense it completly modified the local climate and fucked up the wind prevision (i know because i was suppose to wingfoil all afternoon saturday and we had no wind until like 18-19), also dropping the temperature 2-3C (150km away).

Good luck, and stay safe.

I'm 500 km away in Hérault and this morning was a tad hazy with smoke from there! Impressive I'd say.

What resources would you recommend to follow this event as it continues?

It’s in French but this crowd sourced website updates quite quickly : https://feuxdeforet.fr/gironde-33/saumos-22-07-2026-4367/

Needs a smoke layer like https://firesmoke.ca/forecasts/current/

https://www.windy.com/-Menu/menu?camsEu,pm2p5,50.069,14.395,...

More layers -> PM2.5 is very telling.

NASA FIRMS is good for tracking where the fire is. As well as the site another user recommended, I was following this one: https://feuxgironde.fr/

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