Others are still stranded. Rebecca Papin, a French-American visiting her holiday home in the commune of Biscarrosse, near to the Cap Ferret peninsula, saw a large plume of smoke in the distance on Thursday.
Just three hours later when she arrived home that night, “there were water planes in the sky dropping water, firefighter helicopters in the sky and the entire distance was just a wall of flames,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“It was quite far away from my house but I could see it very clearly from the upstairs level of my home.”
She said the authorities appeared “overwhelmed with trying” to fight the fire and issued no evacuation order, so she slept alongside her young children with her earplugs in – meaning she missed the sound of the evacuation overnight.
“When I woke up in the morning we were almost alone in the city because the city has been evacuated and I’m still here,” she said.
“The main roads are closed because they’re on fire – the police advised me on Friday morning at 7.30am to stay in my home, to not leave my home under any circumstance; there was ash falling from the sky like snow.”
Two other British families told the BBC they had moved 100 miles away to other parts of France to continue their holidays.