Authorities in France have evacuated some suburbs of Bordeaux as a massive wildfire shifted toward the city.

The government mobilised soldiers to join the battle against the flames and rushed in 1.5 million face masks to protect against choking smoke.

The prefect of the Gironde region ordered the evacuation in the early hours of Saturday, covering parts of three of the city’s western suburbs, including its airport.

Evacuations were also under way in other towns and villages further west of the city’s immediate suburbs.

“As the fire continues to spread, and despite the significant resources deployed by firefighters, the situation requires the evacuation of residents from the affected areas to ensure their safety,” a statement from the prefecture said.

Massive forest fires have forced the evacuation of 200,000 people in south-western France and central Spain, with residents fleeing towns near Madrid and Bordeaux on Friday as flames raged out of control.

Firefighters and authorities in both European countries were caught off guard by the virulence of the fires, which were fuelled by high temperatures and the long-term effects of climate change.

Firefighters in Spain said the fires were so fast and violent they could not be tackled head on. In France, some people even fled by boat when flames swept through tourist towns on the Atlantic coast.

Some 141,000 fled homes in the Gironde and Landes departments in France, the French interior ministry said.

In central Spain, 60,000 were forced from their homes, according to the Spanish interior ministry.

Dozens of French firefighters have been injured, authorities said, but no deaths were reported in either country despite scenes of panic as residents fled by car and police went door to door to tell people to leave as large plumes of smoke darkened the skies.

On Saturday, the Madrid regional government said the fires had decreased in intensity overnight as winds and temperatures dropped.

Spain’s Civil Protection Service said it was expecting the arrival of four more water-dumping aircraft — two from Italy and two from Greece — sent as part of a European Union response to the emergency. Firefighting aircraft from the Netherlands and Portugal are already deployed in Spain.

Gironde region prefect Sophie Brocas said on Friday night that strong winds from the west were pushing the fire closer to the Bordeaux metropolitan area and that it had grown to “an unprecedented magnitude”.

“The scale of the fire changed,” she said. “To combat it, we will receive extremely significant national reinforcements. Reinforcements in firefighters, of course, reinforcements in military personnel, reinforcements in healthcare workers, reinforcements in experts. So we are going to form a much larger team to face this extraordinary fire.”

People covered by the evacuation orders were being sent special alerts to their mobile phones, giving them instructions to leave.

“We want everyone to be quickly brought to safety. We must act quickly together,” Ms Brocas said.

The blaze started on Wednesday near Cap Ferret peninsula on France’s Atlantic coast, 37 miles from Bordeaux. On Friday, French interior minister Laurent Nunez described it as “a large, self-sustaining fire that is extremely difficult to bring under control”.

“It’s quite impressive and even frightening,” said Laurent Moretti, a resident in the town of Arès. “An evacuation on this scale has never happened before. All we really hope is that the firefighters can quickly get it under control.”