A wildfire that was still burning on Sunday evening has destroyed nearly 300 hectares of vegetation and two homes in Maine-et-Loire in western France, officials said.
The blaze broke out in the afternoon by the roadside near Hauts-d’Anjou, Thorigné-d’Anjou and Sceaux-d’Anjou, three communes about 20 kilometres north of Angers.
By the evening, around 200 firefighters, 70 vehicles and two water-bombing aircraft had been deployed to try to bring the fire under control as strong winds fuelled its spread. Eighty farmers were also assisting the operation.
Most of what burned was vegetation, fields and hedgerows, Cyrille Lefeuvre, chief of staff at the prefecture, told AFP.
Two homes, three mobile homes and three outbuildings were also destroyed, while a very high-voltage power line was damaged.
Preventive evacuations were ordered, but no casualties had been reported at this stage.
The cause of the fire was not immediately known.
Maine-et-Loire is one of around 30 French departments placed on red alert for extreme heat and is facing a high risk of wildfires.
After several heatwaves in recent weeks, France is dealing with fires across the country this season, from the Fontainebleau forest in the north to the Pyrénées-Orientales in the south and Savoie in the east. \
More than 25,000 hectares have already burned, according to an estimate released on Friday by civil protection chief Julien Marion after an interministerial crisis meeting.
