Bordeaux is a city on edge.
For days, residents and visitors have nervously followed reports of a massive wildfire advancing erratically towards the city.
By the weekend, there was no mistaking how close it had come - with shifting winds bringing smoke and ash into a city usually at the height of its tourism season.
Just north of central Bordeaux, the city's main exhibition centre has been converted into a major evacuation hub.
Here, thousands of people are waiting for news of when they can return to their homes in the Gironde region - and indeed if their homes still stand.
80-year-old recounts evacuation from French wildfire
Many are elderly, now forced to sleep on makeshift camp beds - like 80-year-old Paula, who was forced to abandon her home in Saint-Médard-en-Jalles on Friday night.
"You learn about life," she said.
Paula said she learned of the evacuation through a message on her phone, reading: 'It's time to go. Please leave your house and go to the safe place.'
"To leave a house after midnight driving to the main road.
Paula said that she wants to "go back home as soon as possible".
"But I would simply be able to sit in the garden, try to save my flowers, vegetables."
"I have asthma… and it's been complicated to breathe," one 24-year-old restaurant worker said. "With the wind turning we have lots of smoke in the city. We work in a restaurant, so it's not always easy."
For others, the wildfires are forcing them to rethink their holiday plans.
"We couldn't sleep last night," said a woman from Wisconsin who is visiting Bordeaux after a family wedding nearby.
"We were very worried, all of us. I was researching how to get out of here, possibly this morning, even to Paris."
Although Monday's cooler and damper weather brought some respite - with only just a faint smell of smoke in the air by this morning - authorities are on high alert for the days ahead.
Another intense heatwave is building in the region with forecasters warning that temperatures could reach 40C degrees by midweek. It is a particular issue because conditions in many areas are already tinder dry after successive heatwaves and little rain.
Already, the region has seen 42,000 hectares of land burned - that's larger than the size of the greater Dublin urban area - and 240 houses destroyed since last Wednesday.
There are major concerns for some of Bordeaux's suburbs, with the fire now just 15km from the city's outskirts.
The heat has been so intense in recent days that a new weather system has been identified - pyrocumulonimbus, or "fire clouds", which are large, fire-fuelled thunderstorms that are making the area extremely vulnerable to flare-ups.
French President Emmanuel Macron visited the city yesterday and paid tribute to firefighting teams who are facing a "completely unprecedented wildfire", describing the fires as the "toughest since World War II".
However, there was some positive news - he said a smaller fire further south in the region of Landes had now been contained.
