A fire in the south of France burned through 500 hectares (1,240 acres) of land and destroyed a campsite, with 2,000 people evacuated before the blaze was brought under control on Tuesday. The French environment minister said the climate crisis was exacerbating conditions of drought that fed the fire. No one was injured in the fire, authorities said. “Drought and fire are two sides of the same coin: climate change,” Christophe Béchu, the minister of the ecological transition, said in a tweet during a visit to site of the fire in the Pyrénées-Orientales near the Spanish border. The blaze tore through a tourist area about 30 minutes from Perpignan, which was vulnerable due to “intense heat, dryness and tumultuous winds of up to 180km/h”, authorities said. Most of the evacuees have been able to return to their accommodation or homes, but a few dozen tourists were still waiting to be rehoused, Béchu told reporters in Saint-Andre. Some people lost their documents, money and cars in the blaze, Bechu said. He said this summer had seen fewer fires than last year, when 70,000 hectares were burned, but it was necessary to be “humble” as summer was not over. Five regions in the east of the country are on high alert for heatwaves, according to the French weather authority Meteo France’s website.