The biggest fire of summer in France, still uncontrollable despite big means committed, traveled 16,000 hectares of vegetation in 24 hours in Aude, where he left a dead and two seriously injured, “a catastrophe of unprecedented magnitude”, according to the Prime Minister.
During a visit to Saint-Laurent-de-la-Cabrerisse, the most affected village of the 15 municipalities assigned by the fire, François Bayrou also mentioned a “safeguard and future plan” of which “the Corbières could be the laboratory”.
At the command post of the firefighters, Colonel Christophe Magny, boss of the Aude fire and rescue service, explained the relentless action of 2,500 firefighters on the 90 kilometers of edges, with flames of 10 to 15 meters high, at a speed of 1000 hectares per hour, at the height of the propagation.
Leaving shortly after 4:00 p.m. Tuesday from the village of Ribaute, the fire first headed south-east and the Mediterranean coast. However, the wind changed direction at midday “and pushes the fire to return to its starting point,” the secretary general of the prefecture of Aude Lucie Roesch told AFP, adding that the fire is now “towards fairly inaccessible wooded areas”. A time threatened by the progression of the fire, the A9 motorway between France and Spain was thus able to reopen in the early afternoon.
“The back of the fire has become the front of the fire,” added Colonel Magny, stressing that a thousand people had been evacuated from the victims.
Overlooking the fire front, in Fontjoncouse, an AFP photographer was able to see the fire progress very quickly in opaque smoke, while high flames fueled by the wind gnawed the crests of the hilly landscape of the Corbières massif, where many other homes continue to burn the pine forest and the vegetation.
The fire has traveled 16,000 hectares of garrigue and conifers, “more than the town of Paris”, according to Colonel Magny. It also destroyed or damaged 25 homes and burned 35 vehicles.
An investigation was opened to determine the causes of fire, still unknown. No hypothesis is currently privileged.
In Saint-Laurent-de-la-Cabrerisse, where a 65-year-old lady was found dead in her house, an acre smell of burnt emerges from the nearby charred hectares, while a helicopter loads water in the river below the village and the drop a few kilometers further, noted an AFP journalist.
David Cerdan, 51, lives a hundred meters from the place where the sixties who refused to leave her house on Tuesday evening. The deceased’s home is devastated, like many others near his home. “I put it into perspective, I only have material damage,” he said about his miraculously spared house.
“With the gendarmes, we went to her home to tell her to evacuate, but she did not want to leave, thinking that she was not risking anything,” the mayor, Xavier de Volautat.
The prefecture counted 13 injured: two hospitalized inhabitants, including a seriously burned, and eleven firefighters, one of whom suffered from a head trauma, said Bruno Retailleau. A missing person was found alive.
“The air is suffocating”
In the seaside resort of Port-la-Nouvelle, about thirty kilometers from the fire, “the air is suffocating, with this burnt smell that has infiltrated the dwellings during the night,” said a resident, Serge de Souza.
In the heaven of the Corbières, all national air means have been mobilized. The European Union has announced itself to be “ready to mobilize” means.
At this stage, this is the biggest fire in summer in France. At the end of July, in the middle of the summer season, civil security had recorded more than 15,000 hectares burned on the national territory for 9,000 fire departures, mainly on the Mediterranean coast.
It is also the most important in France since at least 2006, the start of recordings, and since the 1970s for the Mediterranean area, according to the Forest Fire Database (BDIFF) of the Government (which lists the fires since 1972 for the Mediterranean departments and 2006 for France.)
“Stay confined”
The tramontane, a dry and warm wind that strengthens fire, was supplanted on Wednesday afternoon by a sea wind that will still blow Thursday, and “will bring more humid air than before, which is less favorable to the spread of fire,” said François Gourand, Météo-France forecaster.
But it is too early for the hundreds of residents evacuated Tuesday evening to return to their home, warned the prefecture.
The authorities reiterated their safety instructions to the population, calling for “remaining confined except order of evacuation given by the firefighters” and not to clutter the road network so as not to hinder the emergency services.
