France deployed a large military cargo aircraft on Saturday to drop tons of flame retardant as firefighters battled severe wildfires in the country’s southwest, while officials shortened the final stage of the Tour de France so security personnel could be redirected to emergency response efforts.

The latest fires across southern Europe this week have displaced more than 250,000 people, including about 70,000 evacuees in central Spain. One man died in Manises, the municipality said on its Facebook page, marking the first reported death so far in the blazes.

In France, an A400M military transporter flew low over drought-hit woodlands in the southwest, releasing a long ochre-colored plume of retardant as ground crews tried to contain flames that authorities feared could move toward Bordeaux, the city at the center of one of France’s best-known wine regions.

Race organizers and the Paris police department said the 21st and final stage of the three-week Tour de France would be truncated on Sunday, a decision that underscored the pressure two major fires in southwestern France were placing on emergency services. Large public events typically require extensive policing, traffic control and medical coordination, resources that become harder to spare when evacuations and firefighting operations expand at the same time.

Instead of starting from Thoiry, west of Paris, riders will race inside the capital on an 89-kilometer (55-mile) circuit. The planned route had been 133 kilometers (82.5 miles), meaning the stage was cut by about one-third. Some members of the race’s security detail will instead “reinforce the response efforts in the areas affected by the wildfires,” according to the statement announcing the “exceptional measures made necessary by the situation.”

French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said fire crews and authorities were digging trenches, using retardants and taking other measures to block the advance of the blaze as winds were expected to shift from west to east on Saturday afternoon, potentially pushing flames closer to Bordeaux. He forecast a “long and very difficult” battle.

Nunez said the fire was about 30 kilometers (20 miles) west of Bordeaux and had lost some intensity overnight. The prefect of the Gironde region, which includes Bordeaux, said the blaze had developed into “a firestorm” on Friday after igniting earlier in the week, and warned that it “remains dangerous” even as firefighters made progress.

The French government mobilized soldiers to support firefighting teams and was rushing 1.5 million face masks to areas affected by choking smoke.

Authorities ordered evacuations for people located between the fire and Bordeaux, including residents in parts of the city’s western suburbs as well as nearby towns and villages. Evacuation orders in densely populated suburban areas can quickly create additional demands for shelters, transport routes and communications systems, especially when smoke reduces visibility and air quality.

Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu described the fires as unprecedented and said the Gironde blaze became so intense on Friday that it began generating its own winds. Lecornu said firefighting teams were being reinforced with hundreds of soldiers, while breathing masks designed to filter potentially harmful smoke particles were being delivered to exposed residents.

In Bordeaux, officials received thousands of evacuees and provided food and shelter at an exhibition center. The city’s mayor said the site could be equipped to accommodate as many as 10,000 people if needed. Bordeaux’s airport said it remained open, although bus and tram services serving the airport were suspended.

Gironde prefect Sophie Brocas said evacuation orders were sent through special alerts to mobile phones, instructing people to leave. She said the fire had destroyed about 140 homes in the region.

The French military A400M transport plane, specially converted for firefighting, added a major new tool to the response. It joined at least 18 other aircraft and helicopters dropping water and retardant in the Gironde region, Nunez said, operating in rotation through smoke-filled skies.

The intensity of the French and Spanish wildfires, fueled by high temperatures and the long-term effects of climate change, caught firefighters and authorities off guard.

Firefighters in Spain said the blazes spread so rapidly and violently that they could not be confronted directly. In France, some residents fled by boat as flames swept through tourist towns along the Atlantic coast.

“We’ve never seen anything like this,” said Javier Organista, a resident of El Tiemblo, west of Madrid, where fire damaged a famed chestnut grove. “When we saw the flames coming into our town, surrounding us, leaving us with practically no way out, all the neighbors joined together to try to stop its advance.”

“It’s just really sad,” he said.

Spain deployed 2,600 firefighters, police officers and other emergency personnel to two blazes west of Madrid, supported by 19 aircraft and helicopters dropping water.

France assigned 1,400 firefighters to the Gironde fire and sent hundreds more to another wildfire farther south in the Landes region. Authorities said dozens of firefighters were injured as residents fled towns by car and police went door to door ordering people to leave.

A series of heat waves that arrived unusually early and severely this year, bringing record-breaking high temperatures to Europe, has dried out forests and scrublands and turned them into tinderboxes. Wildfire risk in Europe is closely tied to the combination of heat, drought, wind and dry vegetation, conditions that can allow flames to move faster than crews can safely attack them on the ground.

Fires have already burned 130,000 hectares of forest in Spain this year, compared with an annual average of 100,000 hectares over the past decade, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said Saturday during a visit to a command post west of Madrid.

Sánchez said more favorable weather on Saturday offered fire crews “a window of opportunity” to bring the blazes under control. Madrid’s regional government said the fires decreased in intensity as winds weakened and temperatures fell.

The death reported Saturday occurred in Manises, in the wildfire-affected Valencia region.

Other European countries were also assisting. Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, Portugal, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Sweden, Slovakia, Germany and Switzerland had already provided, or were expected to deploy, water-dropping planes and helicopters to the fire fronts in Spain and France. The multinational response reflects how major wildfire outbreaks can exceed the capacity of local and national firefighting fleets, particularly when several countries face dangerous conditions at once.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com