A British family have told how they were left sleeping on a beach and then in a tent in a garden after the wildfires in Gironde forced them to evacuate.
Melissa Sood, 33, and her family were evacuated from the seaside town of Biscarrosse, around 40 miles south-west of Bordeaux.
The GP practice manager had been on a trip to visit her grandmother alongside her husband Sunny, 42, a police officer, her daughter, 14, and her brother and sister.
Melissa said she and her family were initially left stranded on the beach, sleeping on cardboard boxes, until a family friend reached out and said they could camp in their garden in Sanguinet, around seven miles away.
She said: “The fire looked like a scene from a disaster movie, it was terrible. We started to hear explosions, from the gas canisters in people’s barbecues, it was really eerie. My daughter was really scared.
“Our house was evacuated; we had to pull some cardboard boxes out of a recycling bin and use them to try and sleep on the grass. There’s no hotels anywhere, we’ve been sleeping in a tent in a kind French person’s garden since Friday, we’ve had no sleep at all.”
