The megafire on the outskirts of Bordeaux, in the south-west of France, which ravaged 42,000 hectares is “stabilized” but not “fixed”, according to the authorities, after a rainy night and a “lull” in weather conditions, and firefighters are facing a rise in temperatures which raises fears of a resumption of the fire, with up to 40°C expected on Tuesday.
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The Minister of the Interior Laurent Nuñez, who called to “really remain very careful” when leaving the Council of Ministers, will accompany President Emmanuel Macron, expected “in the middle of the afternoon” in Gironde to meet “forces mobilized” against this megafire and “elected officials”.
In the morning, the Head of State chaired an “interministerial crisis unit” devoted to fires
According to a situation update carried out at 12 p.m. GMT by the Gironde prefecture, the day’s operations “focus on the treatment of borders and tactical cutting”.
AFP
2,750 firefighters are mobilized, with the reinforcement of new European resources, as well as 18 air resources, 1,500 soldiers and 1,440 internal security forces.
There are four new injured firefighters, for a total of 88 since Wednesday. Ten had to be evacuated. No casualties have been reported among the population and the toll remains at 240 homes destroyed.
AFP
“Still not masters of fire”
“We have fewer active outbreaks” than on Sunday, Captain Wilfried Schneider, communications officer of Sdis 33 (departmental fire and rescue service), told AFP earlier in the day.
“We have stabilized a situation that was completely unstable, but we are still not in control of the fire,” he added.
Especially since Météo-France has confirmed a “new heat wave” from Tuesday, with maximums up to 40°C and slightly less strong but drier winds.
“All the conditions are met for a resumption of the fire,” warned Philippe de Gonneville, mayor of Lège-Cap-Ferret, whose town was hit from the start of the fire.
On roads like the D106 leading from Saint-Jean-d’Illac, 18 km from the center of Bordeaux, to Lège-Cap-Ferret, we pass dozens of kilometers of charred and still smoking forest. And, after Blagon, several destroyed houses of which sometimes only a few slices of life remain: a wheelbarrow or a children’s slide in the middle of the shells of houses.
AFP
In the air, an A400M military plane equipped with a retardant spreading kit used for the first time on Saturday, carried out a drop again on Monday in the north of the Cap Ferret peninsula, another being planned, according to the army general staff.
220,000 evacuated
In total, more than 116,000 hectares have been covered by fires in France since the start of the year, an “exceptional” situation, said Laurent Nuñez on Monday, which constitutes a new record.
AFP
The fire which ignited the perimeter of the Arcachon basin in Gironde led to the evacuation of 220,000 people, an operation of unprecedented scale, indicated the Minister of the Economy Roland Lescure. Before announcing that insurers would cover the rehousing costs of people evacuated because of the fires in Gironde, Landes and Var.
Insurers also faced with the “massive blow” suffered by “around 14,500” companies which ceased all activity or suffered damage, Patrick Seguin, president of the department’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCI) told AFP on Monday. That is “around 130,000 people who cannot work today”.
As the fire has not been fixed, no return of the evacuees is possible at this stage in Gironde, warned the prefect Sophie Brocas on Sunday. Summer camp activities are also suspended in this tourist department, she then announced early Monday.
AFP
In Bordeaux, “a little more than 1,000 people” were still accommodated at the city’s exhibition center, including “less than a hundred” people who were residents of nursing homes, according to the mayor and president of the metropolis, Thomas Cazenave.
No TGV runs to the south of the city, apart from those serving Agen and Toulouse, and the A63 motorway is closed in both directions between Bordeaux and Bayonne.
“The time for controversy has not come”
A “wave of solidarity”, welcomed by the prefect, made it possible to free volunteer firefighters in companies. And also sees farmers and individual volunteers lending a hand in the field.
Convoys of tractors, vans and utility vehicles filled with water crisscross the roads of Gironde on Monday to help. Like on a deserted departmental road between Audenge and Marcheprime, where fumaroles spring from the burned plots, and where a variety of machines drive at high speed to join a column of fire engines.
AFP
In Porge, a town which paid the heaviest price in terms of the number of houses destroyed, it was the owner of a food truck, Manu Goncalves, who delivered portions of grilled chicken “to the firefighters, who remained on the fire, some for ten hours, ten to twelve hours, without even resting”, he told AFP.
Present Monday afternoon in the commune, the prefect of Gironde responded to criticism of an “abandonment” of the Porge: “People have the right to be angry, they have the right to say it and we must listen (…). But the time for controversy has not come, the time for reckoning is not the right time, the fire has not been set.”
Just to the south, in the Landes, the Biscarrosse fire was “better contained but not fixed” on Sunday, after burning 3,600 hectares and 198 buildings. Some 8,000 people evacuated out of 30,000 were authorized to return home, indicated the prefect of Landes Gilles Clavreul.
AFP
In the Var (south-east), where 2,000 people were evacuated, the fire is “contained” despite outbreaks fanned by the mistral, after covering 4,500 hectares, according to firefighters. Other smaller fires are underway in Corsica and the Hautes-Alpes.
Forests catch fire all the more easily as European vegetation and soils have been very dry for months, a drought accentuated by climate change and recent exceptional heatwaves.
