French firefighters face 'pyrocumulonimbus' for first time

ssaaaaaam about 3 hours ago 36 commentsRead Article on france24.com

ES version is available. Content is displayed in original English for accuracy.

⚡ Community Insights

Discussion Sentiment

64% Positive

Analyzed from 907 words in the discussion.

Discussion (36 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

verzali•about 3 hours ago

The situation in Bordeaux right now feels close to apocalyptic. I left yesterday. Two hundred thousand people are evacuated, hundreds of homes destroyed, and the fire about 10 miles from the edge of the city.

jaynetics•9 minutes ago

I also left yesterday. I thought the mood was still surprisingly calm, considering that there was already enough smoke in the city to make it look like a foggy winter day and smell heavily of campfire.

Now I am wondering if my return flight from Bordeaux in a few days will actually happen. Currently the airport is still operating, although the surrounding area has been evacuated. It really looks apocalyptic there, though:

https://static.actu.fr/uploads/2026/07/aeroport-bordeaux-fum...

expedition32•43 minutes ago

Everyone in Southern Europe who hate tourists are about to get their wish!

toomuchtodo•about 2 hours ago

What resources would you recommend to follow this event as it continues?

verzali•about 1 hour ago

NASA FIRMS is good for tracking where the fire is. As well as the site another user recommended, I was following this one: https://feuxgironde.fr/

msk-lywenn•about 2 hours ago

It’s in French but this crowd sourced website updates quite quickly : https://feuxdeforet.fr/gironde-33/saumos-22-07-2026-4367/

ynac•about 2 hours ago

Just had the same here in Washington state for the Little Giant fire. Great image in the article. We had another fire cloud behind Rainier the other day, and saw it from the Rount Mainier farm - it really looked like the volcano was smoking up and ready to top-off. <clench>

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/climate-lab/little...

eikenberry•about 2 hours ago

https://archive.is/20260725052942/https://www.seattletimes.c...

loeg•30 minutes ago

"East" of Seattle is certainly one way to describe it (100 miles east).

pelasaco•26 minutes ago

That's remember me of https://www.france24.com/en/20190824-macron-france-brazil-bo...

superkuh•about 2 hours ago

There's a good chance that conflagrations during WWII generated such clouds. There are well established incidents of such in Germany (and Japan) (ref: https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/91/9/2010bam... , Hamburg, Dresden, etc) but nothing for certain in France. The British attacks on Royan which destroyed 85% of it with high explosive and napalam would be the most likely site.

touwer•40 minutes ago

Don't look up

rich_sasha•about 2 hours ago

Good job climate change really, definitely, is a global conspiracy and completely untrue.

Because if it weren't, the current trend would be pretty amazing horrifyingly awful.

mingus88•about 2 hours ago

Everyone needs to remember those who were deniers and followers of them

Never let them live this down

edhelas•about 2 hours ago

https://rehost.diberie.com/Picture/Get/f/532005

Picture from the french "moderate" right journal Le Figaro, mai 2026.

"investigation into environmental alarmists"

SiempreViernes•about 1 hour ago

Yeah, lets not forget Bush sr switching from advocating action against climate change to enforcing inaction on the political pretence of protecting jobs.

https://sk.sagepub.com/ency/edvol/globalwarming2ed/chpt/bush...

dgellow•about 2 hours ago

The president of the United States, and pretty much all his cult-members/followers

jauntywundrkind•about 2 hours ago

I think part of why the right keeps getting more brazen, more anti-reality, anti-science, anti-education, anti-school, anti-democracy is that so many of their numbers are coming due. Disinformation isn't working, as the problems mount, so animosity/overdrama/anger and anti-information are the routes left to them now, as Titanic walls of flame engulf the world in their wake.

Bush II dismantled NASA's mission statement to monitor the world, for example. This is not a new foe, and I have not forgotten. https://www.ucs.org/resources/nasa-earth-removed-mission-sta...

jubilee33•about 2 hours ago

Yes because it was the old people watching Fox news who did this...those led astray; but not corporations polluting and their employees "just doing their job", not politicians enabling them and taking payoffs, not the people who own the propaganda outlets?

I mean ultimately it is everyone who ever bought an electronic product or drove an automobile or ate a burger right?... At some level. But it just seems like this level of anger should be directed at the actually decision makers and their lackeys... or are u claiming that there is some sort of functioning democracy that holds power accountable, because most of the electorate like wars and bombing and usury and these things too? If you must be angry, and not saying you shouldn't be, please focus it on the correct source and not other powerless people, misinformed as they may be.

jrajav•about 2 hours ago

Let's roll with the futilist attitude for a second; what is it you suggest that we actually do, once we're focusing the anger on the correct source?

vouaobrasil•about 2 hours ago

And at the same time, on the other side of the world, people are celebrating how much more productive they are with AI, never mind the energy taken up by datacenters both directly and indirectly (encouraging more consumerism and more CO2 output). It's exceptionally callous.

jryle70•about 1 hour ago

People also stupidly watch soccer games such as World Cup, go on meaningless vacations, eat out when they can cook at home, argue nonsense on online forums such as HN. Sure those activities aren't "encouraging more consumerism and more CO2 output"?

cineticdaffodil•about 1 hour ago

Actually- when you take it standalone- e-activities, that lead to little else consumed, are quite ideal. You will never get the budhist monk, meditating on a rock out of normal people, but somebody sittings there, playing a game for hours on a glowing rock, is as close to nilwanna as it gets. So thank you gamedevs out there for creating this.

vouaobrasil•44 minutes ago

Yes. But AI is at the apex of that. Your argument is like saying "he already eats hamburgers, deep fried food, soft drinks, chips, and is already overweight, so there's no harm in smoking as well!"

browningstreet•about 1 hour ago

They denied climate change even before the data center boom. Poor argument, even if the target you want is on the side of the field you’re aiming at.

nerdsniper•about 1 hour ago

I feel like this would be much less of an issue if the datacenters were all fully solar+battery powered.

ajsnigrutin•about 1 hour ago

But if the forests burn down, that makes more tree-free land to build more datacenters!

(/s, it's a joke, like this one: https://i.imgur.com/CMsAp8v.png )

mistrial9•about 1 hour ago

hello from California -- in 2017 three thousand homes burned (Santa Rosa) .. the damage totals are easy to look up.. The skies over San Francisco were so black that the sun was barely an orange dot. I am fully sympathetic to the people in France and elsewhere. This part of the world suffers from wildfire also.

vouaobrasil•about 1 hour ago

What I was referring to were the elite benefitting from AI the most. Even if their house burns up, they likely have enough money to just buy a new (maybe cheaper) one somewhere else and retire. Obviously, not everyone in California is like that - I was referring to those who are getting huge salaries at tech corporations. But it's a lot different for a poorer person to lose their home than a super rich one.

cineticdaffodil•30 minutes ago

So, if you used climate credits, to build up those forrests. Do they get nil and void, if those forrests burn up?