On holiday near wildfires - WTF to do?

[thetinsoldier]

We’re in Bordeaux, 40k from the fires. It’s really smoky, the sun is covered by smoke and it’s really quite scary. Have spoken to neighbours and they say the smoke is just being blown this way, we’re not in danger, but it’s horrible and scary.

What would you do??

Thankfully today it's sunny and clear, and the air is good. The wind direction must have changed overnight. I heard the fires have got worse with the winds though and more and more people are being evacuated from around Bordeaux. :(

For anyone who's been towards the coast where the fires are raging, there is just miles upon miles of homogenous maritime pine forests with very little variety, and I think this is largely the problem.
There's been many local fires elsewhere in France, but most are relatively small in scale, and don't have this opportunity to spread in the same way.

That’s absolutely awful.

If you checkout VRBO’s TrustPilot that’s already covered.

VRBO & Airbnb only care about the bottom line. The reason people use them is because they do have a wide range of good properties.

In this case, the host is not being reasonable. As a pro host I’d expect to refund at least 50% as OP has not been able to take her holiday through no fault of her own.

I’ve dealt with wildfires and pandemics and the host should not be trying to profit from OP in a natural disaster when she is forced to fund alternative accommodation and further costs.

This simply represents loss of income to the host not paid money. For a house with a peak season rate of 5k, their total gross income will be at least 60k.

They can send alerts to all phones connected to local masts, no matter where the phone is from.

We're due to travel Friday on the shuttle, drive to a Campanile in Poitiers for one night, then to a villa in Bergerac. It's in Villeneuve-sur-Lot actually.
Should I be prepared for cancellation? We only have basic insurance which will cover approximately a quarter of the total cost of our holiday.

So you’re not a host and you’ve no clue how any of this works.

You have conflated 2 separate bullet points.

What I advised OP to say to the host directly was simply to remind them that if they don’t cancel the booking the OP can review them. That will focus their mind.

I then went on to make a separate point, that every host well knows believe me, that poor behaviour can be called out in reviews and affect your rankings.

In actual fact, VRBO have rules about extorting money with the threat of a poor reviews which is why I specifically advised a reminder.

In a circ like this when OP will be incurring significant upfront additional costs as well as anxiety and uncertainty it’s important to treat guests humanely.

I can't see why it would be cancelled (if it's the Villeneue S L I'm thinking of that's as fair way east of Bordeaux) but not sure about the air quality you're going to experience.

I'm pretty sure you'd be just fine - it's far enough away. It's possible if the wind blows in a certain direction you might have a day with some smoke in the air, but even then it shouldn't stop you from going out. When I was out yesterday there were many people out and about (only saw one person in a mask) and despite it was a bit unpleasant, the air pollution warning was yellow, nothing too significant. I wouldn't cancel your plans personally.

Things can change quickly with wildfires, so we always advise listening to local emergency services. They will broadcast emergency advise to your phone. This works by pinging local mobile phone towers, so it doesn’t matter if you’re on a British phone, you’ll still get them.

If you have booked a package holiday (which I would always advise nowadays days), you’ll have lots help from your tour operator. We for example, moved all of our clients to alternative accommodation free of charge during the Greek wildfires a couple of years ago.

Just looked at Villeneuve sur Lot must be about 100 miles east of where the fires are...

Probably more importantly what's clobbering the Landes and the west of Bordeaux is the fact the predominant vegitation/industry is pine forest...thousands and thousands of square km of it.

Go easy and things change.

Yes that is called a threat.

Give me money or else is a threat.

This is classic 'moving the deckchairs on the Titanic' behaviour. Nobody will care about the rules if there is no house left to review.

Darned autocorrect - go east and things change.

Bergerac is nowhere near to be affected to the point of cancellation. The smoke might get there for a bit but let’s not catastrophise.

That is not what I said. And all the host has to do is behave honourably.

No idea why you’ve fixated on this aspect instead of focusing on the host’s poor behaviour. But I will not respond further.

OP I think you made the right decision to leave this morning. According to UK news the fires spread a lot overnight and they’re now considering a complete evacuation of Bordeaux. My cousin owns a guest house just north of the area and they’ve evacuated last night. Good luck. (Photo from Telegraph)

My parents are on the border of Lot et Garonne and Tarn et Garonne, about 30 minutes from Villlenuve. The air is nasty at the moment - my dad says it smells like burning rubber to him. But there are also fires in the Gers that are contributing to this.

My heart goes out to those affected. Fire is so devastating. Years ago, I had to be driven cross country to the airport due to a bad wildfire in Crete. Three old ladies died in the village near where I was because they refused to leave their homes. Heartbreaking.

It is your poor behaviour I am commenting on.

Hope that helps.

The levels of particles in the air have just been declared back to normal in Haute Vienne today. But the fires rage on. They are going to have to really look at putting more resources in to contain and tackle future fires across the whole of France at this rate. What a miserable disaster it all is.

It's incomprehensible What's happening. We had bad fires on the Welsh hills last week. Son and family were scared and watched all night. They weren't evacuated but others were.

We didn't have the wind here that France and Spain have.

It is exceptionally poor behaviour to have a tantrum about a scenario you haven’t understand on the thread of a poster in a challenging situation. Take responsibility and stop.

Hard agree with pps' comments about vrbo.

It's important for everyone to know that just because vrbo endorses something, doesn't mean it's safe or legal. We've had experience of their indifference to potentially life threatening issues on our previous holiday to France. I've rarely encountered a more cut-throat, amoral company.

Wishing you all the best in this horrible situation OP.

Glad you got sorted OP. @thetinsoldier

My brother and family have had a really tough few days.

They were evacuated from their campsite near Biscarosse. Spent a night in a shelter/hall in Mios. Then a volunteer put them in touch with with a lovely lady who said they could stay with her for a night so they had a shower etc and were just settling into bed when they all got an evacuation notice from Mios! So last night around midnight they drove to Gujan. They were a bit freaked out at that stage because they were effectively pinned down between the two major fires and with all the road closures, weren't sure how to get out!

Anyway another lovely local family took them in last night and this morning the road East from there was open and they could finally get out of the area and onto a motorway to get FAR away.

They've managed to get their flights changed for Wednesday to fly home from Toulouse instead of Bordeaux so are going to spend a few days there (just need to find accommodation).

Just glad he's safe. It's been awful for them.

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The smoke inhalation won't be doing you any good anyway and then it is a live situation. You have the option to leave, the locals don't

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Bordeaux was briefly run by the Green party until a few months ago. The new right-wing mayor has spent the last couple of months cancelling all the eco-friendly measures they brought in and stripping out public gardens to put in more car parking.

The situation isn't great at all but I'd be really careful if how some of this is being reported in UK MSM, there was some misleading stuff last night and perhaps the catastrophising is continuing in some places.

The official line from the Mayor of Bordeaux not long ago in a statement to TV was:

"The fire in Gironde is "15 kilometers" from the Bordeaux metropolis. The evacuation of the city of Bordeaux is at this stage "not on the agenda."

Of course that may change PDQ,

OP is already doing this. Read her updates .