'Humanitarian crisis!' | Wildfire in Spain triggers MASS evacuations as inferno RAGES out of control

Look, we're going to kick off with the wildfires story and they are horrific across Europe at the moment. Thousands upon thousands of people have been evacuated from parts of France and Spain. Yes, authorities ordered a total evacuation of the Cap Ferret region in France. President Emmanuel Macron has requested help from the European Union as the country's battle against wildfires intensifies. All right, travel correspondent for The Telegraph, Simon Calder, joins us alongside Nathan Rowe. The weather journalist, and we'll get to Nathan in just a sec. Simon, what is the situation at the moment? I mean, what's been worst hit? OK, if you look in terms of sheer numbers, the worst fires are actually in the area around Madrid. The Madrid region has never, according to the local governor, had such appalling wildfires. There's some talk of flames spreading towards the Spanish capital itself, but those are not yet substantiated. And we have had tens of thousands of people evacuated there. Of course, this is a humanitarian crisis where people are losing their homes. And we've seen, very sadly, the loss of life among some firefighters. But, of course, it's the height of the holiday season as well. And as Sir Dalton was mentioning, Cap Ferret, the lovely peninsula in southwest France, close to Bordeaux, that is normally, at this time of year, absolutely packed. And we've had tens of thousands of people evacuated from there because of its location and the fact that there were fires blazing slightly inland. An awful lot of people were taken away on boats because it was the only way to get them out. Very popular, as Stephen said, with British people. Lots of lovely campsites, holiday cottages and apartments and so on. And that is really worrying. And then the other key location is southern Italy, but in particular the island of Sicily, the largest island in the Mediterranean, where seven of the nine provinces have said that they are at their highest alert. And we've seen wildfires spreading there. And what advice is there to people? Many people start the school summer holidays, many people are heading off to those places now. What advice should we give them? Well, exactly, it's a really tricky problem. Now, most people, and these are our top three favourite countries, Spain, France, Italy, most people will be going to parts of those locations where there are no problems. So, for instance, the Spanish Costas all seem, at the moment, absolutely fine. Most parts of France are all fine as well. And by the way, if you're heading away from Dover, it's relatively smooth this morning in terms of that getaway. Going to Italy, yeah, if you book to Sicily, you are going to be concerned. I've been checking the flights and the main airports are open. And your airline is probably going to say to you, well, the flight's going, the fact that you might be concerned isn't our problem. 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What about if you haven't booked yet? Yeah, there's some great deals around for this summer. And, I mean, I'm looking particularly at southeastern Europe and the Greek islands, particularly in Turkey, places where over the past three summers we've seen some really serious wildfire. So bear that in mind. But I'm also seeing some extraordinary deals. A family of four going to Greek islands for around £1,000 for a proper package holiday. What, for the whole family? Yeah, at the height of the summer season. It's one of those weird summers. So, yeah, there are some holidays around. But I think increasingly, Stephen, we will see people thinking, actually, we'll stay fairly north because it's the fourth summer in a row where in southern Europe we have had extreme wildfires. And also, as you've been reporting, as we'll hear from Nathan, very high temperatures going with this, which is, frankly, not enjoyable if it's simply too hot. All right, Simon. Thank you. Let's see what Nathan has to say then. Because, I mean, it is these temperatures which are absolutely soaring. Yeah, and Simon is quite right. The temperatures have been up in the 40s in that part of the world. It's France and Spain which have been mostly hit. I must say that the fires are very rarely caused by the weather, by the temperatures. It's usually almost always human activity that causes the fires. And it's the weather, the dry winds, the very long periods of hot temperatures. Temperatures of 44 degrees around that whole region, France and Spain. Dry weather and very little rain, similar to what we've had in the UK, where we've also coincidentally had some wildfires as well, that are driving these fires. Tens of thousands of hectares of land have been destroyed, states have had emergencies. And what they need is rain. What they need is rain to quench these fires and remove the emergency, which doesn't look likely in the near future. Because it's high pressure, the heat dome that we've been talking about right through summer, causing those very high temperatures, clear skies, clear cloudless skies and no rain, which is what they need. And how unusual are these temperatures? The temperatures are very unusual. Now, hot weather in summer obviously isn't unusual. Hot weather for long periods of time is not unusual. What is unusual is that when we get these periods of hot weather, the temperatures are reaching record levels. 44 degrees is not something that we are used to in Europe. What's that in old money? It's more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit. And in the UK, I'm going back to the UK, we're seeing 35. We've had three months now where we've seen 30 degrees. 30 in May, 30 in June, 30 in July. It's not unusual to get warm weather in the summer, but it is unusual to see 30 degrees all through that period. So across the whole of Europe and into the UK, we're seeing unusual temperatures and longer periods of hot weather. And as Simon earlier said, this isn't the first heatwave in Europe. The Cerberus heatwave of a couple of years ago. We were talking about the same thing back then and wildfires back then. So this is a problem and it's a problem we're going to have to start getting our heads around.