Fabienne Buccio and Marc Vermeulen did not leave each other for twelve days and twelve nights. Well almost. At the bedside of the megafires of Landiras and La Teste-de-Buch, the boss of the Gironde departmental fire and rescue service (SDIS) often slept in his car. Fabienne Buccio, the very methodical prefect of the New Aquitaine region, still came home to shower before returning to the field.
They did not communicate on the presence of a Seveso-classified oil site near La Teste-de-Buch, but both were constantly thinking about it… On July 25, they announced together that the two fires which had started the 12 were finally “fixed” and that the 37,000 evacuees could return to their homes. On Franceinfo, the prefect, exhausted, had sobs in her voice. Fabienne Buccio said her relief to have avoided the tragedy.
The general opinion is that she carried out this operation masterfully. There were only 25 minor injuries to the firefighters and very little material damage. There remains a completely charred moor, 20,800 hectares of forest bleached by ashes. And then the memories. “With Marc Vermeulen, we are now linked by this adventure, confides the representative of the State. I will never forget the night of July 19 to 20, at the peak of the heat wave, when the hydrometric rate did not reach 10% and the blaze, in Landiras, broke out like never before to the point of advance at 2 kilometers per hour towards the Dune du Pilat. »
Spotted by Jacques Chirac
At 62, the prefect is a specialist in high-risk missions. Granddaughter of an Italian immigrant, born in Gap to a house painter father and a cleaner mother, she grew up in a modest and Catholic environment. “She kept a simple report, easy for people”, observes an old acquaintance.
After her baccalaureate, she went to Grenoble for a DUT before taking the competition for the regional institute of administration in Lyon, thanks to a scholarship. A claimed feminist, admirer of Colette, this mother of two children in their thirties, married to a professor of civil engineering, called her daughter Claudine, named after the writer’s heroine.
“In two weeks, Fabienne managed to evacuate the migrants [de la “junge” de Calais] calmly, with a lot of empathy and patience with the NGOs. » Bernard Cazeneuve, former Minister of the Interior
It was Jacques Chirac who noticed her after the storm of 1999, when she held the post of second-class sub-prefect in Corrèze. “He was won over by his pragmatism, his efficiency,” remembers Frédéric Salat-Baroux, former secretary general of the Elysée.
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