200 hectares burned… New fires affected the South-East of France on Sunday, particularly in the Gard.

A firefighter was seriously injured.

Partial motorway cuts have taken place due to the smoke.

"Four firefighters are injured," Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin announced in a tweet about the fire that broke out around 3 p.m. in a pine forest in the town of Aubais (2,000 inhabitants), south of Nimes.

The department is at extreme fire risk and will be on heatwave orange vigilance from Monday noon like four other departments in the South-East (Drôme, Ardèche, Vaucluse, Pyrénées-Orientales).

One of them, "seriously injured", was evacuated to the Montpellier Hospital Center for burns, the three others, more slightly injured, were victims of a "hot stroke" following a reversal flames by the wind which partly destroyed their vehicle, specified to AFP the colonel Agrinier who coordinates the operations on the spot.

Preventive evacuations

Fanned by the Mistral and the Tramontana, whose gusts blow at 60 km / h on dry ground, the fire progresses from 2.5 to 3 kilometers per hour, explained to AFP the commander William Borelly, in charge of communication .

Some preventive evacuations in districts of Aubais were in progress and a multipurpose hall was opened in the village to accommodate these inhabitants, specified the prefecture and the firefighters to AFP.

As a safety measure, the A9, which serves Spain in particular, had been closed in both directions to traffic for about ten kilometers between Lunel and Gallargues due to smoke.

It reopened at 7:30 p.m., motorway company Vinci announced.

Five planes and a water bomber helicopter are in action.

Reinforcements of firefighters from neighboring departments are also expected to help the 170 firefighters already mobilized.

Red Vigilance in Gironde

In the Bouches-du-Rhône, about twenty kilometers from Marseille, a fire which broke out at the end of the afternoon near Pennes-Mirabeau, extended over 35 hectares, according to the Departmental Service of fire and rescue (Sdis).

Some 200 houses threatened by the flames have been protected.

“A thick plume of smoke was visible above the A7 motorway”, which was cut off, noted an AFP journalist.

A traffic jam formed on the detour route on this day back from vacation.

France has already been hit by several large fires since the start of the summer.

Nearly 21,000 hectares were ravaged in Gironde while 1,600 hectares burned in a fire in Provence, south of Avignon, in mid-July.

The Gironde department will once again be placed on red alert for the risk of fires in the forest, the prefecture announced on Sunday.

If summers are dry in the South, with global warming, the intensity of these episodes of drought is likely to increase further, according to UN climate experts.

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Heat wave: Five departments placed on orange vigilance by Météo-France, from the Ardèche to the Pyrénées-Orientales

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