Against the fire in the Var, “the game is far from won” – Le HuffPost

Relatively untouched by the fires that have recently raged in several Mediterranean countries, from Turkey to Morocco via Greece, France is experiencing its biggest fire of the summer.

“We are now at at least 5,000 hectares traveled. There is plenty of fire in all directions, the game is far from won. The wind picked up, turned a little, and the fire began to affect areas not yet impacted, “Var fire captain Olivier Pecot told AFP on Tuesday. It was too early, according to firefighters, to assess the burnt area.

“It’s my forest that burns”

At the place called Les Seillons in the town of Gonfaron, a few meters from the place where the fire started on Monday, the pressure did not fall and seven Canadairs are increasing the water drops on the forest and the scrubland.

After evacuating her house at the request of the gendarmerie during the night, Nathalie Gecele found it intact on Tuesday, but is not reassured, the noisy civil security helicopter still circling above her.

“I was very afraid of losing my house and my son who insisted on staying put,” explains the 50-year-old. “I thought the house was going to burn so close the flames were getting closer.”

Emmanuel Macron goes to the scene

On the road that crosses the Massif des Maures, an area of ​​forest and scrubland popular with tourists, power lines are on the ground, poles are charred and the vine has burned in places, an AFP team noted.

“From thousands of people were evacuated as a preventive measure, but there are no victims, ”a spokesperson for the Var firefighters told AFP on Tuesday morning. Six campsites in all were evacuated, the gendarmes told AFP, who deployed 120 personnel in the area. A dozen homes were “destroyed” by the flames according to the same source.

In Bormes-les-Mimosas, nearly 1,300 people, mostly holidaymakers from a neighboring campsite, were welcomed in a gymnasium in this village near Fort Brégançon, the summer residence of President Emmanuel Macron who returned in the afternoon to the fire brigade command headquarters with the Minister of the Interior. Believing that “the worst, at this stage, has been avoided”, the Head of State designated the “next hours” as “decisive”. According to Le Figaro, he also welcomed that there are no casualties at the moment, while insisting on a “provisional result, because the battle continues”.

A devastated nature reserve

About 900 firefighters are still mobilized. The damage to the environment is significant: “Half of the Plaine des Maures nature reserve has been devastated. It’s a disaster, because it’s one of the last spots sheltering Hermann’s tortoise ”, a protected species, explained to AFP Concha Agero, deputy director of the French Biodiversity Office, hoping than these animals will have been able to bury themselves underground to protect himself. Reptiles have fewer possibilities to protect themselves.

“We saw the rabbits and the hares flee and I put a Hermann turtle back into the water in the river to try to save it,” says Marie-Françoise Laure, a resident of Gonfaron.

Last year, a fire burned 1,000 hectares in a tourist area in Martigues, west of Marseille, causing the evacuation of nearly 3,000 holidaymakers. According to the Prometheus database, around 2,340 hectares burned in the Mediterranean region (four regions concerned) in France in 2021, against 7,698 in 2020.

Corsica affected by smoke from the fire

The Var fire had consequences until Corsica. Indeed, this August 17, at midday, Qualitair Corse triggered the air pollution alert, believing that “this new episode of pollution is the consequence of the major fire currently raging in the Var”.

“Since the end of the morning, the measurement stations have been recording high concentrations of suspended particles from the south of France. (…) Numerous reports reach us and confirm that the phenomenon is visible to the naked eye over a large part of the island ”, underlined the organization in a press release, specifying that“ the duration of this This episode is difficult to predict at the moment and will depend on the evolution of the fire and the weather conditions ”.