Plumes of smoke rose above a vast sea of pine trees outside Bordeaux as firefighters in gleaming helmets rushed to douse emerging flames before they could spread. "It's intense, titanic," said Florian Lointier of the Paris Fire Brigade, an army unit dispatched to southwest France to help exhausted crews tackle the huge wildfire. More than 5,000 firefighters, military personnel, police officers and volunteers have been battling the ferocious blaze, which has forced one of the largest evacuations in France's history and was 15 kilometres (nine miles) from Bordeaux's suburbs. FRANCE 24's Camille Knight brings us more with this report.