Guillaume Bos described how he watched on Friday as a fire swept through his village in the Gironde region, the area hardest hit by the wildfires raging in southwestern France. Around his home, he said, “everything is burned as far as the eye can see.”

“It’s a real disaster,” said Mr. Bos, 36, a business manager and forest owner who lives in Le Temple, a village with around 600 residents some 18 miles west of Bordeaux. Blazes have been raging for days, fueled by unusually hot and dry conditions and evading the efforts of firefighters to contain them.

Mr. Bos said he had received an order to leave on Friday afternoon, but, like others in France, he chose to stay with farmers and forest owners to try to fight the flames. His wife and son evacuated.

“When your wife and son leave, and you don’t know how things are going to turn out — yeah, it’s not easy,” he said.

Using tractors and trailers loaded with water tanks, Mr. Bos said that he and his friends had managed to save most of the houses at the heart of the village, but about six were destroyed, along with most of the surrounding pine forest. Though the worst is now over, he said they were spraying water all around Le Temple to keep the fire from reigniting.