ROB SCHMITZ, HOST:
We begin tonight's program in Europe, where wildfires continue to burn, devastating large swaths of the continent. Overnight, two Greek firefighting helicopters collided just outside of Athens. Two crewmembers died. Meanwhile, in France, some of the more than 200,000 people who have had to evacuate have started to return home. The southwest of France is no stranger to wildfires, but the ones that raged this past week, devouring a hundred thousand acres, are something new. NPR's Eleanor Beardsley traveled to Bordeaux, where she visited the aftermath of a fire, and she sends us this report.
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: Aurelien, (speaking French).
AURELIEN COSTES: (Speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: (Speaking French).
I meet scientist Aurelien Costes in the Bordeaux region, where he grew up in one of the small towns surrounded by pine forest near the Atlantic coast of France. But today he's just visiting because now he works as a wildlife researcher at San Jose State University in California.
COSTES: I'm specialized in wildfire modeling.
BEARDSLEY: And what is that?
COSTES: I develop models on the computer to try to anticipate what the fire is doing to reproduce the fire dynamic to better understand the physical processes.
BEARDSLEY: It's a rather new science, he says, to help anticipate and better fight wildfires. Costes is the fourth generation in a family of firefighters.
COSTES: So a lot of history, and we have forests ourself in my family. So it's really personal.
(SOUNDBITE OF CAR DOORS OPENING)
BEARDSLEY: He takes me to the aftermath of a blaze where two firefighters lost their lives a week ago. It's an apocalyptic-looking landscape of charred trunks and branches and ashy, sandy soil.
COSTES: Everything is very black, which shows the intensity of the fire.
BEARDSLEY: Early and frequent heat waves that scientists say are linked to climate change created drought conditions across Europe and parched these maritime pine forests with their beds of pine needles.
COSTES: This is, you know, very flammable vegetation, and also pine trees are very flammable.
BEARDSLEY: Costes says something else happened in Bordeaux that's never been recorded in France before. The fire became so intense it generated its own thunderstorm cloud called a pyrocumulonimbus, or pyroCb, a phenomenon more common in California. The clouds can rise more than 6 miles into the atmosphere and create their own weather.
COSTES: Big clouds that are going to change the fire behavior on the surface. And that's why they are so dangerous. You can have downdraft that are very, very intense. And so when this downdraft - they hit the ground, you know, they can form winds that are going in any direction.
BEARDSLEY: Costes says such erratic fires are impossible to anticipate or put out. Their fuel has to be cut.
(Speaking French).
CAROLE GOMEZ: (Speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: OK.
The next day, I meet Carole Gomez, one of the more than 200,000 people evacuated. She drives me around the little towns west of Bordeaux that were emptied out as the fires approached. She is shaken and says the government must take climate change more seriously. She says scientists have been warning of these kinds of consequences for decades. We drive by workers clearing a wide swath of land of its trees and brush and soaking it with water.
They're clearing out. They're making these known as pare feu. They're just breaks in the forest to block flames. It's new, she says. That wasn't here before. They're going to have to change these forests.
(SOUNDBITE WATER SPRAYING)
BEARDSLEY: She drops me at a logistics station where fire trucks are being cleaned and repaired. Romain Pitaud is head of the operation.
ROMAIN PITAUD: (Speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: "The truck can set off a kind of mist spray around it," he says, "to protect itself and allow it to drive through the flames and get out." Pitaud says all the latest technology was put to the test in these fires. Firefighters have become heroes in Bordeaux.
PITAUD: (Speaking French).
MANON: (Speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: Just then, a family with three kids comes up to offer homemade crepes to the group of firefighters to thank them. The mother, Manon, who doesn't wish to share her last name, says she's always thought this the perfect place to live, but these fires have left everyone feeling vulnerable.
MANON: (Speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: "It's very scary," she says. "We can't really feel completely safe now. We see that this doesn't just happen to others." Fire modeler Aurelien Costes says with the warming climate, this could be just the beginning. Eleanor Beardsley, NPR News, Bordeaux. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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