More than 6,500 hectares of agricultural land and forests burned in France Thursday under the combined effect of the heat wave and drought, mobilizing 4,000 firefighters, according to a national assessment of civil security release Friday.
A total of 267 vegetation fires and 10 forest fires were recorded in the territory over the last 24 hours and fires were still in progress Friday in the Eure. The Hauts-de-France region, where temperature records were broken in several cities such as Lille (41.5 ° C) or Dunkirk (41.3 ° C), was particularly affected with nearly 2,500 hectares of harvests. stubble gone up in smoke.
Harvesting threshing crops prohibited in the North
In the Oise, 61 fires of natural spaces have ravaged over a thousand hectares, told AFP the Fire and Rescue Service (SDIS). Six firefighters and a 72-year-old man were slightly injured. The Somme has seen 850 hectares of farmland go up in smoke. A total of 800 firefighters were deployed on 79 interventions, we learned from the department's SDIS. In the North, the prefect has banned crop threshing within a radius of 500 meters around inhabited areas until 7 pm Friday.
Normandy, the Center and Lorraine also experienced major fires. In the Eure, at least 1,500 hectares of crops and vegetation were destroyed since Thursday afternoon and eight fires were still in progress on Friday, said the prefecture to AFP. The fire has also spared animal breeding: in the Yonne, about 600 pigs died in the fire of a farm in the town of Champlost.