U.S. mom and kids trapped by French wildfire: ‘Such an unstable situation’

▶ Watch Video: American family trapped in France as wildfires rage on in Western Europe

Along France’s southern Atlantic coast, more than 2,500 firefighters are battling the largest wildfire to hit the country this year. It has already scorched an area four times the size of Paris in less than a week. Officials say the fire is so large, it has started generating its own wind and fire storms.

Thomas Cazenave, the mayor of Bordeaux, said the fire inched to within only around 9 miles from the wine-growing region’s metropolitan areas over the weekend, and 15 to 19 miles from the city itself.

At least 84 firefighters have been injured, more than 200 homes destroyed and more than 220,000 people forced to evacuate. That is more than five times as many evacuations as the last major French wildfire, which hit the same region four years ago.

About 25 miles south, down the coast, a second fire sparked by a burning van on a country road forced another 30,000 people to flee the town of Biscarrosse, including residents of a nursing home and a children’s summer camp.

French authorities ordered residents to evacuate the town Thursday, but Rebecca Papin, from Franklin, Tennessee, and her two children — Violet, 9, and Louie, 11 — found themselves trapped.

“On Thursday night, when I put the children down around 11 o’clock to go to sleep, it was such an unstable situation that I thought the next day anything could happen, and that I must get at least a couple of hours of sleep,” Papin told CBS News. “I’m a very light sleeper. So I always sleep with earplugs in, and because of that, I missed the evacuation when they went throughout the city.”

Papin saw large plumes of smoke in the distance from her holiday home, but by Friday morning, it was too late. She said the first thing she noticed was how quiet her street was.

“As I opened my shutters, within two minutes, I had somebody ringing the doorbell and it was a police officer saying, ‘You’re not allowed to leave at this point,'” she said. “So, I was taken aback first of all, because I was not expecting that. And then I was concerned because I looked around on the street and every car from every driveway was gone. I had the only, the only car.”

She said there were soldiers in the town and the supermarket did open for a few hours on Sunday.

“When I went to the supermarket, it was only me and the soldiers in their combat clothing and camouflage,” she said. “I felt strange seeing the soldiers in the grocery store. It felt like being in a film.”

And the wildfires are not just raging in France.

Across the border in Spain, the government has declared a national emergency as crews fight fires on two fronts — one west of the capital Madrid, which has become the largest in the country’s recent history, and another near Valencia on Spain’s Mediterranean coast, where a 78-year-old man was killed.

European scientists say heat and drought are fueling these blazes, which come after Western Europe recorded its hottest June ever.

France has already lost an area nearly the size of Los Angeles to blazes this year, and its fires are still raging out of control.

Despite officials saying she cannot leave now, Papin told CBS News she would take matters into her own hands if necessary to protect herself and her two children.

“My street is barricaded. There’s a metal barrier that’s been placed at the beginning and the end of my street because it’s so dangerous. No one can enter or exit. And so what I will do would be to move the barrier and drive off of the street,” she said. “And when I hit the first police blockade that goes out of the town, the first police stop point, I will say I fear for my life. I can no longer stay in the city and I will continue driving.”

But she said there is only one road out of the town. It goes through one of France’s largest forests, the Landes de Gascogne, and the road is already engulfed by fire. 

It could get worse this week, as a fourth heat wave is forecast to hit France and much of Western Europe, from Italy to the U.K., around midweek, with temperatures pushing 104 degrees Fahrenheit. 

Some weather models predict the looming heat wave could last through the first week of August.