"Thank God", the human toll is "not heavy", released, relieved, Eric Spitz, the prefect of the department, alongside Claude Olive, mayor LR of Anglet (40,000 inhabitants), this Friday. The spectacular fire which started Thursday evening in a forest in the heart of Anglet (Pyrénées-Atlantiques) was brought under control during the day, after destroying 165 hectares of forests and vegetation and several houses. Fortunately, it did not claim any victims, but the site remains under surveillance.
"About twenty people passed through the hospital but all came out without problem, including 2 firefighters and 9 police officers," said the prefect. One hundred hectares burned in the Chiberta forest as well as 65 hectares of vegetation within the adjacent housing estates.
"A spectacle of desolation"
According to the municipality of Anglet, 24 homes were affected by the disaster, including five houses destroyed by flames, while a hundred residents had to evacuate urgently and spend the night in an accommodation center. Some of them, whose houses were spared, were able to return home on Friday, according to the prefecture. Others have found a rehousing solution "thanks to numerous outbursts of solidarity," the city said.
VIDEO. Fire ravages the Anglet forest
The site remains "under surveillance", according to the prefecture, after seeing required the efforts of 150 firefighters, 60 police officers and Samu teams. If the origin of the fire is still unknown, the mayor, very moved, said to feel “anger” in front of “a spectacle of desolation”, stressing that in “a very busy forest” like this one, “there is rules to be observed ”. An investigation, entrusted to the judicial police of Bayonne, was opened by the public prosecutor of this city for "destruction by fire". The prosecutor Jérôme Bourrier recalled that "even in the absence of intentionality", the destruction of forests can constitute an offense punishable by 5 to 7 years of imprisonment.
Dantesque weather conditions
After "the fear", the time is "for the expertise of what happened" to have "the most appropriate response", said Friday evening on site the Secretary of State for biodiversity , Bérangère Abba, who promised that “the government's effort will be real”. The choices in terms of forest management "must be reconsidered in the light of the climatic and environmental context", she added, while questions return in a loop about the physiognomy of this pine forest of Chiberta, deliberately wild with a lot of vegetation. on the ground.
The fire broke out late Thursday afternoon, fueled by the wind and fueled by drought and high heat. The mercury had also risen Thursday to 41.9 ° C in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, not far from Anglet on the Basque coast. The meteorological conditions, "Dantesque with sometimes leaps of fire from 50 to 100 m" according to the prefect, complicated the task of the firefighters, as did the high size of the pines of the massif, "very difficult to reach". after the secretary general of the prefecture Eddie Bouttera.