Marseille wildfire grounds all flights, forces hundreds of home evacuations

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World

A wildfire spurred by blistery summertime winds reached France's second-largest metropolis Tuesday, grounding each flights to and from Marseille, injuring astatine slightest 9 radical and forcing galore residents to evacuate their homes oregon barricade themselves indoors arsenic fume choked the Mediterranean air.

More than 1,000 firefighters deployed to conflict 'particularly virulent' blaze

The Associated Press

· Posted: Jul 08, 2025 8:15 PM EDT | Last Updated: 7 hours ago

Massive fume plumes from wildfire darken entity supra Marseille, France

Hundreds of firefighters battled a fast-moving wildfire that reached the outskirts of the confederate French metropolis of Marseille connected Tuesday, forcing radical to enactment indoors and the adjacent airdrome to close. Video posted to societal media showed monolithic fume plumes filling the entity adjacent a residential country and a metropolis bridge.

A wildfire spurred by blistery summertime winds reached France's second-largest metropolis Tuesday, grounding each flights to and from Marseille, injuring astatine slightest 9 radical and forcing galore residents to evacuate oregon barricade themselves indoors arsenic fume choked the Mediterranean air.

A large hospital successful the metropolis switched to generator power, bid postulation was halted successful astir of the surrounding area, and immoderate roads were closed, while others were tangled with logjams.

More than 1,000 firefighters were deployed to tackle the fire, which broke retired adjacent the municipality of Les Pennes-Mirabeau earlier racing toward Marseille. Some 720 hectares were deed by the blaze, officials said successful a connection Tuesday evening.

Nine firefighters were injured, according to the connection from the section administration, known arsenic the prefecture. No deaths have been reported.

In its statement, the prefecture noted that "the concern is nether control," though it said the fire, which was described as "particularly virulent," has not yet been extinguished.

Heat wave heightened wildfire risk

It came connected a cloudless, windy time aft a lengthy vigor question across Europe near the country parched and astatine heightened hazard for wildfires. Several person breached retired successful confederate France successful caller days.

Light grey fume gave the entity implicit Marseille's aged larboard a dusty facet arsenic water-dropping planes tried to extinguish the occurrence successful the outskirts of the city, which has a colonisation of about 900,000.

Hundreds of homes were evacuated. The prefecture urged radical successful the affected areas to enactment indoors and disconnected the roads. With the occurrence approaching Marseille, the prefecture besides advised residents successful the northbound of the metropolis to support windows closed to forestall toxic fume from entering their homes.

One distressed household watched the fume implicit their neighbourhood successful the hills supra the larboard metropolis and showed the Associated Press how the extortion of their neighbour's location had been damaged successful the occurrence arsenic they disquieted astir their own.

A idiosyncratic uses a h2o hose successful an effort to douse a burning car.

The airdrome successful Marseille announced that the runway had been closed astatine astir midday. The prefecture said bid postulation was halted, notably aft a occurrence neared the tracks successful L'Estaque, a picturesque neighbourhood.

As a information measure, the city's Hospital Nord switched to generators "due to micro powerfulness cuts."

"The purpose is to unafraid the imaging sector. We are not disquieted arsenic we person a precocious level of autonomy," the University Hospitals of Marseille said, adding that due to the fact that of the disrupted postulation it was asking workers to stay astatine their posts until the adjacent shifts started.