2,000 firefighters mobilized, 37,000 people evacuated and 19,000 ha of forest gone up in smoke.
The double fire of Landiras (12,800 ha) and La Teste-de-Buch (6,500 ha) in Gironde is still not extinguished and is already breaking records.
But to fully appreciate the burned forest area, a small comparison is necessary.
Certainly the calcined surface appears almost derisory on the scale of the forest massif of the Landes, the largest artificial forest in Western Europe, with its million hectares.
But comparing the number of hectares destroyed with the area of other French forests already makes it possible to better take the measure of the disaster.
19,000 hectares are equivalent, for example, to the area of the legendary Brocéliande forest, the largest in Brittany.
What does 19,000 ha represent?
Broceliande
For city dwellers, it's as if Paris and its inner suburbs went up in smoke.
The burnt surface is in fact equivalent to almost twice the surface area of the intramural capital (approximately 10,500 ha).
What does 19,000 ha represent?
Gironde fires
1,900 ha destroyed are also equivalent to double the land part of the Calanques National Park, in the Bouches-du-Rhône (8,500 ha), which had also been threatened by a fire in 2016 and which has just been closed until July 25 due to the risk of fire.
What does 19,000 ha represent?
Gironde fires
The surface calcined by the fires of La Teste-de-Buch and Landiras also represents more than 80 times that of the Disneyland Paris amusement park.
What does 19,000 ha represent?
Gironde fires
Finally, 28,000 football pitches would be needed to completely cover the hectares of land charred by the double fire.
"We have just drawn a line under the forest of La Teste de Buch", regretted the forestry expert Jacques Hazera in an interview with Le Parisien, specifying however that it had been for several years "abandoned, with fallen trees , rotting”.
“The other fire, that of Landiras which affects the forest massif, which is used for the production of wood is an economic disaster for many”, he added.
Read alsoNearly 15,000 hectares burned in Gironde: why this figure is daunting
On a scale never seen for 60 years, this double fire does not represent a threat to the Landes forest massif, according to Christian Pinaudeau, former director of the Maison de la Forêt in Bordeaux, which manages the organization of private woods. from the southwest.
"The massif has been able to recover from much more catastrophic phenomena such as the gigantic fire of 1949, which devastated 110,000 ha, or the Klaus storm in 2009, which felled 205,000 ha of forest, i.e. 20 times the surface area of Paris. », recalls the author of the book « Echec aux feus ».
And for the 19,000 ha gone up in smoke?
"If the funding is in place, everything will be reforested within two to four years," says the expert.
This Tuesday at the end of the afternoon, the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin explained however that the firefighters were going to have to "continue their fight" because the fire was still going to "continue to burn".
