France moved police off the Tour de France finale to fight the Gironde fires, and cut the stage from 133km to 89km

Stage 21 of the Tour de France was cut by 44 kilometres on Saturday afternoon, and the reason is in the announcement.

The Ministry of the Interior decided to redeploy a portion of the internal security forces that had been mobilized to secure the final stage, sending them instead to reinforce the response in the areas hit by wildfires. That is the wording of the joint statement issued by the Prefect of Police and the Director of the Tour de France and posted on the race's own site at 15:53. The stage between Thoiry and Paris was shortened to 89 kilometres from 133. Riders will be presented at Thoiry at 2:40 p.m. and then travel into Paris by bus, the official start will be given from the finish line at 5:50 p.m., and after two extra laps of the Champs-Elysees the race is scheduled to finish on the Montmartre circuit at 7:45 p.m.

The fire itself is larger than it was on Saturday. On the France 24 live blog run by Solene Clausse, the burned area in Gironde stood at 42,000 hectares on the prefecture's estimates, after a flare-up during the night forced tens of thousands more people out and brought the department's evacuation total to 220,000. Rail traffic south of Bordeaux was interrupted. The A63 was partially closed.

Figures for casualties, for structures lost, and for the national burned area this year have been reported elsewhere and are not carried here, because they come from different authorities on different clocks and the ones above do not depend on them.

The Tour decision is the cleanly documented fact in all of this, which is why it leads. It is also the one that measures the emergency without estimating anything.