The fire in the Var is “fixed, but not extinguished” – Le Monde

The fire which ravages the hinterland of Saint-Tropez since Monday is now “Fixed, but it is not controlled”, announced Friday August 20 the prefect of Var, Evence Richard.

“‘Fixed’ means that the head of the fire is no longer moving, but it is not extinguished”, said the director of the departmental fire and rescue service of the Var, Colonel Eric Grohin. The latter added that a westerly wind was announced during the day and that resumptions of fire were therefore not excluded. “We must remain extremely careful, with the drop in humidity, the rise in temperatures and the expected wind”, insisted Mr. Richard. “We cannot rule out new fires”, again warned the prefect.

After a calm, cooler and windless night, more than a thousand firefighters remained “Very concentrated” Friday morning, harnessed to drown as quickly as possible some 80 kilometers of edges of this fire, before the resumption of the gusts.

In total, the fire covered 8,100 hectares and burned 7,100 hectares of forest, vineyards and scrubland, devastating in particular nearly half of the Plaine des Maures National Nature Reserve, a haven of biodiversity close to the start of the fire. , left at the edge of a motorway area of ​​the A57, north of Toulon.

Thursday, the Var gendarmerie issued an appeal, as part of the ongoing judicial investigation, to collect “The testimony of people having information to communicate on the circumstances of the outbreak of the fire”. “It is about making sure that we did not pass next to someone who would have seen something”, explained to Agence France-Presse (AFP) the prosecutor of the Republic of Draguignan, Patrice Camberou.

10,000 people evacuated

As for the human toll, it is still two dead, the charred bodies were found in a property in Grimaud, in a hamlet in a deep valley, and twenty-six wounded – twenty-nine civilians, slightly intoxicated, and seven firefighters.

This fire, in the middle of summer, in a very touristy department, required the evacuation of some 10,000 people. On Wednesday evening, 1,300 holidaymakers from the PachaCaïd campsite in the village of La Môle were able to return to their tents and mobile homes, and thousands more spent a third night in emergency accommodation.

The balance sheet is also very heavy for the producers of rosé de Provence. Some winegrowers having seen their equipment or sheds reduced to ashes. The Maures nature reserve, a haven of biodiversity, has also been partly devastated.

Several countries around the Mediterranean, from Israel to Morocco, via Algeria and Spain were affected by serious fires this summer. According to a report produced by Météo-France in 2010, there is a constant increase in the frequency of days presenting a meteorological danger of forest fires, as well as an extension of the season conducive to fires due to climate change.