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Authorities in France and Spain say some of the countries’ wildfires that have raged for nearly a week are mostly contained, but other fires are blazing on, and a new wave of extreme heat, dry conditions and strong winds is raising fears of more fires to come.

In southwestern France, two major fires that began last week have burned through about 100,000 acres of forests, farmland and villages.

The response has involved thousands of firefighters, military personnel and international support. Around 5,000 people are battling the flames in France, while the European Union has sent firefighting aircraft and helicopters to assist French Canadair planes that scoop water and dump it on the flames.

Canadair firefighting aircraft are deployed to extinguish the wildfire on the Camp de Souge military training ground, near the town of Martignas-sur-Jalle, Gironde, on Tuesday.

Gauthier Bedrignans/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images

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Gauthier Bedrignans/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images

At the height of the crisis, more than 200,000 people had to evacuate their homes and vacation sites in France and nearly 100,000 in Spain. Tens of thousands of evacuees have been authorized by the governments of both countries to return.

The worst-hit area in France is the wine-growing Gironde region along the Atlantic coast, known for its beaches, surfing and enormous pine forests.

It is home to the Landes Forest, man-made woodlands of pine trees were planted in the 1700s to help absorb swampy soil. But today, those forests have become a massive source of fuel for wildfires.

Repeated heatwaves have left the landscape dangerously dry.

This comes as climate change, brought on primarily by the burning of fossil fuels, is making heat waves last longer and peak at higher temperatures than in the past.

Europe is warming faster than any other continent and the number of extreme heat days is expected to multiply, says Mounia Mostefaoui, a climatologist and board member of a French scientific expert group on climate change.

“These heat waves, they create drought conditions. It’s exactly what we have currently in France [where] we had three heat waves,” Mostefaoui says. “We are only in July, August has not even started.”

France is now facing a fourth heatwave this summer — creating what experts describe as the perfect conditions for large-scale wildfires.

Firefighters say these blazes have been especially challenging because they can change direction quickly and behave in unpredictable ways.

Scientists say France is experiencing a phenomenon more commonly seen in places like California: fire clouds, or pyrocumulus clouds.

Jean-Baptiste Filippi, a scientist with the French National Center for Scientific Research who specializes in fire-weather forecasting, says these clouds form when an intense fire interacts with the atmosphere.

Filippi says that creates a powerful exchange of heat and energy that can strengthen the fire itself.

“Any time you have a cloud that is forming, you have energy in the atmosphere. But the fact that the fire is there is making this energy available for the fire, so the interaction becomes strong,” he says.

Filippi says a column of hot gases and rising winds can create a cloud that reaches up to 6 miles high. Once that happens, he says, these fires become almost impossible to stop — much like a storm cannot simply be shut down.