Resumption of a fire in Gironde: 6000 hectares burned and thousands of evacuees
The forest devastated by fire in Saint-Magne, south of Bordeaux.
PA
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3 mins
A month almost to the day after the start of the gigantic fire in the south-west of France, the fire has resumed with vigor since Tuesday afternoon.
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The fire progressed throughout the night.
In a few hours, the galloping fire on the south-east of Landiras devoured more than 5,000 hectares of forests in different sectors between the Gironde and the Landes.
It is a “
major fire
”, “
much more virulent and rapid
” this night than in July, described the general controller of the local firefighters, Marc Vermeulen.
The advance of the flames led to the preventive evacuation of 6,000 people between the two departments from Tuesday evening "
and it is likely that the figure will increase
", warned the delegate prefect of the Gironde department, Martin Guespereau .
As in July, communal halls collected residents who had to leave their homes.
With a certain weariness.
“
These are very difficult situations for people who were already evacuated in July when the fire next door had caught
,” said the delegate prefect of Gironde.
If it gets close... You know, the forest here, it's dense.
It is very dense.
Faced with the advance of the fire in the Landes, the gendarmes evacuate the inhabitants of Saugnac-et-Muret
Matthew Bonhoure
This Landiras fire, 40 km south of Bordeaux, which ravaged nearly 14,000 hectares of forest in July, without causing any victims, was "
never declared extinguished
" and was placed under constant surveillance.
It resumed with a vengeance on Tuesday afternoon thanks to "
extremely unfavorable weather
" caused "
by heat waves, dry air, dry vegetation
", among others, explained the prefect.
The fire also destroyed 16 houses, without causing any injuries, in several sectors of the town of Belin-Béliet where an evacuation operation of around 2,000 people was underway.
►
To read also: Fires in Gironde: the fire of La Teste-de-Buch "fixed", that of Landiras "content"
Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne is due to travel to Gironde this Thursday with the Minister of the Interior.
Traveling in the department of Aveyron (south), on another front of fires, Gérald Darmanin expressed this Wednesday “
great suspicions that the fire which resumed is the work of arsonists
”.
"
This morning, there were eight fires, between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m., which started a few hundred meters apart, whereas it is quite unusual
", specified the Minister, recalling that "
nine fires on ten are of criminal or involuntary (human) origin
”.
Faced with the "
violent
" resumption of these fires, the Minister announced the strengthening of resources which now include "
more than 1,000 firefighters, 9 planes and two water-bombing helicopters
”.
France, and particularly the West, is again affected on Wednesday by an episode of heat wave, the peak of which is expected at the end of the week, according to the forecaster Météo-France.
July 2022 was the month of sad records in France: the second driest month ever recorded in the country, after March 1961, and that of burned surfaces.
Gigantic fires around the world
The fires are no longer just about countries used to such extreme situations.
This year, countries in Eastern Europe have experienced unprecedented fires.
This was the case in Hungary, Slovakia, Austria and Switzerland.
Slovenia, for example, had to ask its neighbors for help to contain the flames that were ravaging the west of the country.
In France, the bar of 50,000 hectares burned was exceeded on Wednesday.
A magnitude never reached since 1976. In Europe, more than 600,000 hectares have already burned this year.
Last month, the Maghreb countries also suffered major fires.
North Africa is regularly hit by fires.
This year, 10,000 hectares went up in smoke in northern Morocco.
A situation that is becoming recurrent in the United States, where megafires have ravaged the West of the country every summer since 2018.
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