Firefighters were preparing to fight all night against a violent fire in the north of Gard on Thursday, at the end of a day marked by multiple fire starts in this department and the neighboring Bouches-du-Rhône, stoked by “extreme weather conditions”.
At the start of the evening, it was above all a fire “in very unfavorable evolution”, “in dense vegetation”, towards the remote hamlet of Bordezac, in the Cévennes massif, north of the Gard, which worried the emergency services. Started around 5 p.m., the fire had already affected 400 to 500 hectares around 8 p.m., according to firefighters.
“It will continue for several days”
“This fire is, how to say, a mega fire”, explained the commander Tanguy Sagères, in charge of communication of the firefighters of Gard.
“It is an extremely unfavorable and very critical situation in the area, because the wind is not calming down and it is not going to calm down tomorrow, feared this fire official. It will continue tonight and several days. »
At 8 p.m., the firefighters recommended that the inhabitants of Bessèges and Gagnières “remain confined to their homes”, recalling that “only the security services can decide on the evacuation”.
This order to evacuate has already targeted around thirty inhabitants of the hamlet of Bordezac, “put to safety in a restaurant” in a neighboring town, said Jean Rampon, the sub-prefect of Alès, at the firefighters’ headquarters in Besseges.
“A house burned down and the village was saved in extremis by the firefighters”, specified Mr. Rampon who testified to a wind “still virulent, blowing south-southeast but sometimes changing direction”. On site, 150 firefighters were already mobilized Thursday evening, pending 350 other reinforcements. Significant air resources were also mobilized, with 6 Canadair and two Dash.
Four burnt houses
Another fire was still raging Thursday evening in the Gard, in Générac, in the south of the department. Faced with this fire which covered 150 hectares of low vegetation and pines, 50 machines and 120 men were mobilized.
It was on the territory of this same commune of Générac that the pilot of a Tracker 22 lost his life in August 2019 while fighting a violent fire which had burned 800 hectares of vegetation.
In the neighboring department of Bouches-du-Rhône, firefighters had to deal with no less than 35 fire outbreaks during the day. And in particular in Arles, around noon, with a fire starting from reeds and brushwood in a commercial area.
Driven by a strong Mistral, the fire had quickly spread to finally jump National 113, a strategic axis ensuring the junction of the A54 between Nîmes and Marseille, and cut it in both directions.
Four houses were burned, according to an initial relief report, and four others damaged.
At the end of the day, another fire was “over”, according to the firefighters of Bouches-du-Rhône, in Martigues where a fire started in the Escaillon district had caused the confinement of the inhabitants and the temporary evacuation of the residents. of a retirement home.
In a department marked by extreme drought and in anticipation of strong winds, the 500 firefighters of Sdis13 had been reinforced by 450 additional men on Thursday, they said. The gusts reached up to 85 km / h Thursday in the Bouches-du-Rhône where the prefecture had prohibited access to the 25 massifs of the department, from the National Park of the creeks to the Alpilles very close to Arles. For Friday, only six massifs will remain closed.