Now “under control”, the fire in the Var is not yet extinguished

The fire which has been ravaging the hinterland of Saint-Tropez for a week could be brought under control on Monday 23 August, but it will take several more days for it to be declared extinct, the Var firefighters announced.

“The fire is under control: it is contained in its current envelope thanks to the work of the teams on the ground”, explained the emergency services, who tried to create a barrier of delaying “As tight as possible”. Some 400 firefighters, however, remain mobilized to treat the edges and “This phase will last several more days”, they warned.

If the fire is “Mastered”, that is to say without resumption of flames, it is not yet extinguished. “It will take us at least a week before declaring it extinct”, that is to say without embers, explained Captain Olivier Pecot, Monday morning.

In total, this fire covered 8,100 hectares and burned 7,100 hectares of forest, vines 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. , started from a rest area on highway 57, north-east of Toulon.

Danger of fires on the Mediterranean coast

From Friday, the fire, which killed two people and led to the evacuation of thousands of people in the hinterland of Saint-Tropez, had been declared ” fixed “ (i.e. mastered). But the firefighters feared new recoveries in favor of the wind that blew all weekend on this fire, the biggest in France this year. On Monday, many massifs around the French Mediterranean were also placed on fire red vigilance.

On Saturday, in an area near the fire, a 56-year-old man was arrested when he had “Deliberately set fire to a piece of forest”, announced the prosecution of Draguignan. The firefighters were quickly able to extinguish this disaster. The man was to be presented to an examining magistrate for an indictment for ” arson “.

Several countries around the Mediterranean, from Israel to Morocco, via Algeria and Spain, were affected by serious fires this summer. According to a Météo-France report 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.