Wildfire in southwest France uncovers hundreds of World War II shells

Bomb-disposal teams in Le Porge recovered around 400 World War II shells and pieces of ammunition after a forest fire swept through the pine woods near Bordeaux and exposed the buried cache. Residents were kept out of the area until the site was secured, and all of them had returned home by Monday, Aug. 3, after days of demining work.

The discovery added a wartime threat to a disaster already driven by drought and extreme heat in the Gironde department of southwestern France. Explosions were heard in Le Porge as the wildfire raged, and the blasts were believed to have come from the old munitions buried in the ground. No one was injured when the shells were found, but the ordnance created a new hazard for firefighters and for people trying to get back into the village.

The fire had already forced a mass evacuation across the Le Porge and Lege-Cap-Ferret area. On July 23, at least 12,000 residents and tourists had been moved out, and later tallies put the number of people fleeing the blaze at more than 20,000. The fire front ripped through pine forest close to Bordeaux, leaving blackened land and damaged homes in its wake.

Le Porge took some of the hardest damage. Nearly 200 houses burned down there, while the wider blaze destroyed 42,000 hectares in 10 days. The scale of the destruction underlined how quickly a fast-moving summer fire can overwhelm a rural and holiday region packed with forests, homes and seasonal visitors.

The buried shells also pointed to a longer problem France has never fully cleared away. Decades after World War II, unexploded ordnance still turns up in fields, forests and construction sites, and a fire can expose what was meant to stay hidden. In Le Porge, climate-driven fire danger and historic military debris collided in the same patch of ground, turning an evacuation and containment operation into a search for live wartime explosives as well as safe passage home.