While France has faced renewed fires in recent days, the coolness and rain of this weekend of August 15 were beneficial for firefighters.
In the Drôme or even in the Jura, the lights are now "
fixed
".
However, 650 firefighters are still mobilized on the Landiras fire and 26 suspected arsonists have been arrested since the beginning of the summer.
Le Figaro
takes stock.
Landiras: 650 firefighters mobilized, no "criminal" recovery according to the prosecution
Some 650 firefighters were still mobilized on Tuesday to neutralize the many hot spots which continued to burn on the perimeter of the vast Landiras fire, which ravaged 7,400 hectares of pines and whose prosecution dismisses a recovery
"of criminal origin"
.
Of all the firefighters mobilized, nearly half are part of the European contingent deployed on site as part of the European Union's civil protection mechanism, created in 2001, according to the firefighters.
Among them, 146 Polish "strazacy" make a strong impression with their
"very rigorous"
work and their 21 deployed vehicles.
Also present are 141 German and Austrian “Feuerwehrleute” and 77 Romanian “pompierii”.
"Our mission now is to extinguish the hot spots, to continue the work on the edge and to secure the tracks to avoid a new resumption of the fixed but not yet controlled fire"
, explained to AFP the lieutenant-colonel of Sdis of Gironde Laurent Pham, specifying that the fire
“continues to burn underground, in peat soil”.
In the evening, 21 Polynesian firefighters are also expected on site, soon joined by firefighters from Reunion and Mayotte.
Regarding the resumption of this fire on August 9,
“no element allows us to lean towards a criminal origin”,
the Bordeaux prosecutor's office also told AFP on Tuesday.
The criminal thesis is on the other hand, always privileged concerning the first departures of the fire on the sector in mid-July.
A judicial investigation has been opened on the criminal counts of
"destruction by fire".
” SEE ALSO –
Fire near Landiras: the fire “now fixed”, announces the prefecture
The main fixed lights in France
The great fire which ravaged 1360 hectares in Aveyron, was "
fixed
" by the firefighters, announced Monday the prefecture in a press release.
The 1,000 evacuees were able to return to their homes or vacation spots.
In Drôme, the fire which has ravaged 383 hectares of vegetation since August 5 was also set for Sunday at the start of the afternoon.
The prefecture recalled "
that a light device will remain under surveillance to avoid any resumption of fire
".
The rain that fell on the Jura in the night from Sunday to Monday made it possible to moisten the soil, limiting the risk of recovery.
More than 1050 hectares of forest have been reduced to ashes in the Petite Montagne du Jura, in the south-east of the department.
“
This is historic
,
”
authorities said.
A fire that ravaged some 700 hectares in the Vescles and Cernon sector was fixed on Sunday afternoon.
Two more, declared in the Cornod and Sarrogna sector, were extinguished on Sunday morning.
26 suspected arsonists arrested since the beginning of the summer
Since the beginning of the summer, France has been burning everywhere, from the Ardèche to Maine-et-Loire, via the Landes, the Gironde, the Jura or even the Isère.
While most of the fires were started accidentally or even naturally - in particular due to high temperatures - a significant proportion of these would be the malicious act of arsonists.
This is why, systematically, an investigation is opened each time a fire breaks out.
In fact, since the start of the summer season, 26 individuals have been arrested throughout the territory for acts of arson, we learned this Tuesday from the Ministry of the Interior.
Four of them have already received a conviction and six have been remanded in custody, adds a judicial source.
Read alsoFires: 26 suspected arsonists arrested since the start of the summer
Pyrénées-Atlantiques: an arsonist arrested and placed in a psychiatric hospital
A 40-year-old man arrested on Sunday for having started two fires in a forest in Anglet, on the Basque coast, was hospitalized in a psychiatric unit on Monday evening, the Bayonne prosecutor's office said on Tuesday.
“The investigation is suspended for the time of his hospitalization, we cannot hear him at this stage”
, explained the deputy public prosecutor of Bayonne, Marc Bride.
The police had been alerted by passers-by who saw the suspicious behavior of the man, early Sunday afternoon, on the edge of the forest of Chiberta, in Anglet.
The man was already known to the police for having assaulted a bus driver a few days earlier, on the night of August 7 to 8, in Biarritz, according to the prosecution.
“He had been interned before being released on Friday because his condition was not considered to be of concern by the doctors
,” said the mayor of Anglet, Claude Olive, on Tuesday.
The man, with a clean criminal record, is summoned before the Bayonne court by the end of the year, to answer for this attack, according to the Bayonne prosecutor's office.
He spent two days in police custody before being transferred Monday evening to the Pellegrin hospital in Bordeaux.
»SEE ALSO –
Fires: on motorcycles, gendarmes track down arsonists
Fires: the government announces tax aid for the victims
A
"fire unit"
will be set up within a week with the key to tax aid for individuals, businesses and communities affected this summer by the fires, announced Monday the Minister of Public Accounts Gabriel Attal in an interview at
Dauphiné .
Released
.
“We want to give a little oxygen to all those who have suffered directly from the fires”
, declared the minister in the columns of the regional daily, via
“devices to support individuals, businesses and communities affected”
.
In order to
“limit the economic and financial consequences that the French people concerned will have to suffer
”, Gabriel Attal and the Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire have decided to set up
"by next week, a 'fire unit' in the direction of public finances, in connection with the Urssaf"
, which will be responsible for setting up
"a kind of tax buffer".
For individuals who have seen their property permanently affected, Gabriel Attal already mentions
"mainly three measures"
: an exceptional deadline for levying income tax, a suspension of local taxes (property tax and housing tax ) regarding damaged housing and a potential downward revision of rental values,
“depending on the depreciation of the property”
.
On the business side, the minister promised
“deferrals of payment of tax deadlines”
and an accelerated reimbursement of VAT or CICE credits,
“to give a boost to their cash flow”
.
Forest fires: a record summer of burned areas in Europe
Since January 1, fires have ravaged 662,776 hectares of forest in the European Union according to data updated on Sunday from the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), which has kept comparable statistics since 2006 thanks to satellite images. of the European Copernicus programme.
France had worse years in the 1970s, before European standardized data.
But the year 2022 is the most serious in 16 years according to these figures, largely because of two large successive fires in Gironde, in the south-west of the country, where German, Polish and Austrian firefighters arrived this week. backup.
” SEE ALSO –
Fire vigilance: the forest police track down tourists with dangerous behavior
