After just under two weeks of fighting, firefighters have overcome the fires in Gironde. 21,000 hectares of forest have been destroyed.
After twelve days and thirteen nights of fighting, the two “outstanding” fires which ravaged nearly 21,000 hectares of forest in Gironde and led to the evacuation of some 36,000 people are now “fixed”, but the work to extinguish them continues.
In Landiras, in the south of the department where 13,800 hectares of pines have burned since July 12, the fire is “now fixed”, announced Monday the prefect of Gironde and New Aquitaine Fabienne Buccio.
This report had been drawn up on Saturday for the other fire which had started the same day, in La Teste-de-Buch in the Arcachon basin, which ravaged 7,000 hectares of forest.
The results of this “relentless fight” against the flames are “positive”, noted the prefect: no victims to deplore and rather limited material damage, five houses, a restaurant and a discotheque destroyed, the five campsites of the Dune du Pilat , from where 6,000 holidaymakers had been evacuated, out of nearly 2,800 “directly exposed” buildings. Twenty-five firefighters were injured, “fortunately slightly” according to Ms. Buccio.
In the Landiras sector, some 40 km south of Bordeaux, a few thousand evacuated residents who had not yet returned to their homes received the green light from the prefecture on Monday.
“Be careful, these fires are not extinguished. Fixed, this means that there are no longer any active outbreaks,” assured Ms. Buccio, pointing to “two outsized fires due to extreme weather conditions (scorching temperatures, editor’s note) and the means mobilized to contain them”.
According to the boss of the Gironde firefighters (SDIS 33) Marc Vermeulen, “the next step is to take control of the fires, which should reasonably be the case this week. For the actual extinction, it may take several weeks and will depend weather conditions. It’s a laborious job that begins”.
The peat soil in the Landiras sector requires particular vigilance because there is a risk of fire smoldering under the ground “which can re-emerge quite significantly”, he specified, also warning of the danger of falling ” weakened pines”.
“Titanic Works”
The areas to watch for firefighters, he said, are equivalent to “28,000 rugby pitches” in Landiras and “14,000” in La Teste-de-Buch. The burnt surfaces represent twice the area of Paris intra muros.
Up to 3,000 firefighters from Gironde and 1,200 others from 60 departments have been mobilized, but human resources will now drop to some 450 firefighters. Two Canadair and two forest fire attack helicopters remain on site.
In the fight against these fires, “we had to show imagination (…) by carrying out titanic and unprecedented work on firewalls and fallback zones”, underlined Fabienne Buccio. More than 130 km of work has been completed and is ongoing.
The prefect and the boss of the firefighters also explained that the Gironde had had to deal with “non-standard” fires, not with “megafires”, “which we decide cannot be controlled and that we leave to act alone, like in Australia or the United States”. “We have never stopped fighting and we are about to have won,” said Ms. Buccio.
Marc Vermeulen also thanked the communities, associations and citizens of Gironde who mobilized in large numbers to support the firefighters at the logistical level, with many marks of affection and attention that marked the firefighters.
Faced with the scale of the crisis and the beginning of a controversy over aerial means of combat, President Emmanuel Macron traveled to Gironde last week, stressing that France should acquire “more” planes.
To read : A summer in hell. From the Gironde to Provence, France is on fire
The PS president of the Gironde department, Jean-Luc Gleyze, for his part hammered Monday that the Landes de Gascogne massif, “the largest softwood forest in Europe”, straddling Gironde and Landes, should “be endowed with aerial means of combat, especially in the summer”.