After the gigantic summer fires, the flames continue to wreak havoc in Gironde where a new fire, potentially of criminal origin, has covered more than 3000 hectares since Monday and caused the evacuation of several hundred people.
Firefighters fought a second night against this disaster in Saumos, a village in the south of the Médoc, between the seaside resort of Lacanau, on the Atlantic coast, and the Bordeaux conurbation where monthly temperature records were beaten on Monday.
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A judicial inquiry has been opened into the origin of the fire which led to the evacuation of 300 more people on Tuesday, bringing the total to "
840 people
" in 24 hours in Saumos and the neighboring town of Sainte-Hélène, according to the prefect of Gironde Fabienne Buccio, who came to the site on Tuesday at the end of the afternoon.
“
There is no additional material damage
”, she added, even specifying that “
the toll at the level of the houses is perhaps less important
” than the figure of four burnt houses mentioned so far.
Read alsoIs the Gironde fire exceptional for the season?
“
No track is ruled out even if the criminal thesis is privileged
”, indicated to AFP the parquet floor of Bordeaux Tuesday afternoon, while specifying that “
additional investigations
” were “
for the moment impossible taking into account the
raging
fire .
The flames still covered more than 1,500 hectares on Tuesday afternoon, for a total covered area of 3,270 hectares, according to the departmental director of the Girondins emergency services Marc Vermeulen.
Three Canadair, two Dash, three helicopters, 751 firefighters...
The firefighters' task was complicated by the appearance of another fire starting in Vendays-Montalivet, a seaside resort 40 km to the north, where 75 hectares of forest had already burned the previous week.
But at the end of the afternoon, the situation had become "
favorable
" on this front where ten hectares burned, according to Marc Vermeulen.
“
For the moment, we are holding the Vendays fire, so all the air resources are coming back here, on the fire
” from Saumos, said Fabienne Buccio.
Firefighters in the fight
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Three Canadair, two Dash and three water bomber helicopters therefore continued their rotations until nightfall, in support of the 751 firefighters mobilized from all over the country.
"
They will be reinforced to reach the figure of 920 firefighters
," said Marc Vermeulen.
The weather remains difficult, with high heat and wind, but no additional evacuation is envisaged immediately because "
we have no additional dwellings in the axis of the fire
", added the head of the fire department. Girondins.
Read alsoThe nightmare of fires resurfaces in Gironde
At the village hall of Porge, a few kilometers from Saumos, around twenty evacuees were fed and cared for by volunteers who have been taking turns since the morning.
“
At first, we didn't want to evacuate, but when a gust of wind brought the flames back and I started to have embers everywhere, suddenly I preferred to evacuate.
There, I'm a little in shock, I no longer have a home
, ”says Marc Cloet, a resident of Saumos.
"
Most were welcomed into their families in other towns, with friends, in local lodgings
", added Lionel Montillaud, the mayor of Sainte-Hélène where 20 homes were evacuated and a house burned down.
The damage is already considerable
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Heat wave
During a summer marked by a historic drought, major fires had already burned 30,000 hectares in July and August in Gironde, in La Teste-de-Buch, on the edge of the Arcachon basin, and in Landiras, at a forty kilometers south of Bordeaux, in the heart of the Landes de Gascogne massif.
At the end of August, a 19-year-old student, volunteer firefighter in Gironde, was also indicted and imprisoned for "
destruction by fire
", suspected of 31 fire starts in the north of Médoc.
Near Landiras, the forest is gradually coming back to life.
THIBAUD MORITZ / AFP
This new blaze also brings back sad memories to the inhabitants: a gigantic fire, the largest since the post-war period, had already ravaged in July 1989, just a few kilometers from the current fire, more than 3500 hectares between Lacanau and Le Porge .
In the Landes, another, smaller fire, which destroyed 45 hectares of pines late Monday afternoon in Herm, northwest of Dax, was fixed Tuesday morning, according to firefighters.
Read alsoForest fires: the deadly summer
The latter feared the day of Monday because of a new wave of heat due to a rise of hot air from Morocco, according to Météo-France.
Monthly temperature records, sometimes half a century old, have been broken in several municipalities.
The thermometer exceeded 40 degrees in places in the Landes and it was 37.5 ° C in Bordeaux, unheard of since 1987.
