• Five days after the death of two people in the hamlet of Val de Gilly (Var), the emotion is still strong.

  • The affected residents are organizing to understand why the firefighters failed to protect their village, as they had managed to do in 1979 and 2003.

Night fell on the ashes of the fire which ravaged the heights of Saint-Tropez, in the Var.

At La Garde-Freinet, around Amandine's pizza truck, the discussions that evening were invariably introduced by the same question: "And you, did you burn out?"

»Sébastien lives on the top of La Croix, a locality in the heart of the massif which dominates the Plaine des Maures, where the fire started.

He spent part of the night with a shovel crushing the outbreaks that were taking here and there and threatening his home.

"Fortunately, I maintain my land well and the fire crossed it without reaching the house," said this carpenter who still lost tools and five vehicles, American cars that he heard being repaired.

Not all were so lucky.

"I went to tell an 88-year-old granny"

In Val de Gilly, a steep-sided hamlet located five kilometers as the crow flies on the southern slope, two people died and several houses burned down. The modest county that leads there offers a sad landscape among the remains of blackened vegetation. Here, a charred car, further on a letterbox, a truck, electric poles and their melted cables then, inside a property, a piece of sheet metal deformed by the blaze suggests that a shelter is wanted it. Five surviving petanque balls bear witness to the games played. The house was saved, again at the cost of severely cleared land.

Continuing to climb towards the heart of the hamlet, where the road ends, a few cars pass. At dinner time, when the sound of a continuous news channel escapes from a window, Anke, a Dutch resident of the neighboring village of Cogolin for nearly 20 years, came to see the damage. She wanted to see the house she had once almost rented.

Of this only three walls remain. On the relatively intact neighboring house, next to the charred shutters still retained by their steel supports, are displayed a few telephone numbers to deal with the most in a hurry: recycling center, social center, charity. His owner Line, contains a sob. “It happened so quickly, the smoke, the stinging nose… Around 9 pm, an old man from the village came to find us and said 'we must go, the fire is at La Garde-Freinet, that will happen". I went to tell an 88-year-old grandma who couldn't hear anything with her headphones for the television, then we left ”. Her story is interrupted by Laurence who comes to ask for a little favor.

"We received by message the order to evacuate the town hall at 10:15 pm, the firefighters were still not there and we were surrounded by flames"

In the hamlet, it is she who seems to have taken matters in hand. Former senior civil servant, her sense of action and organization is intact. Most importantly, she now wants "a full investigation to take place." Because there were flaws in the chain of command and communication, ”she said. “We received by message the order to evacuate the town hall at 10:15 pm, the firefighters were still not there and we were surrounded by flames. Two trucks would have been enough to defend the village, as in 2003 and 1979 ”. This is why she endeavors to collect the elements allowing to restore the precise chronology of the evening. “To understand where it can go wrong and correct,” Laurence wishes. She thus intends to be able to challenge the prefect and hopes to obtain a meeting with him quickly for the hamlet.

Going down from the Massif des Maures towards the plain, along the winding D558 traversed by the flames, panels made by children have been placed.

"Thank you to the firefighter and to all those present to save our lives", we can read, as a reminder that if the toll is heavy and the anger and the deep disarray in Val de Gilly, everywhere else, the worst is all about even been avoided.

Society

Fire in the Var: Julien Denormandie, the Minister of Agriculture, at the bedside of the winegrowers

Planet

Fire in the Var: how the Massif des Maures can rise from its ashes

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