Prime Minister François Bayrou described the nearly 40,000-acre fire, which has killed one person, as a “catastrophe on an unprecedented scale.”

France ’s largest wildfire in decades is continuing to burn and spread across the south of the country, leaving miles worth of land damaged, local authorities have said. The blaze started on Tuesday and tore through the Corbieres Massif, a mountain range in the Pre-Pyrenees located in the Aude region.