The Hérault in the grip of a fire, an evacuated village


As France faces drought, a fire broke out in Hérault, near Montpellier. The village of Aumelas was evacuated under threat.

A fire in an area of ​​vineyards and Mediterranean vegetation about twenty kilometers from Montpellier (Hérault) covered 500 hectares in a summer marked by an upsurge in fires and an acute drought in France. The authorities asked the inhabitants of a village of some 500 inhabitants, Aumelas, to evacuate preventively.

“In total, nearly 500 firefighters are engaged. Two Canadairs and a Dash (water bomber planes) are also deployed, as well as two planes from the departmental cell of the Hérault firefighters. Three columns of zonal reinforcements are expected on site”, indicated the prefecture of Hérault.

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The yellow and red planes of the civil security flew over the wooded areas interspersed with surfaces of vines, noted an AFP photographer on the spot.

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The firefighters had been working since the end of the morning on two fire starts, separated by 1.5 km, which broke out in the municipalities of Saint-Bauzille-de-la-Sylve, Gignac and Aumelas, in a sparsely populated area. The two fires then met, added the prefecture.

“The fire is currently heading towards Aumelas”, a village of 531 inhabitants, according to the prefecture. “Order of the sub-prefect: total evacuation of the village, direction multipurpose hall of Vendemian”, a neighboring locality, for its part indicated on Facebook the town hall of Aumelas. “I am not in the hamlet but on the plateau so for the moment I have been told to stay at home. The wind is rather favorable to us but it does not stop turning”, indicated to AFP a resident of the area who preferred not to give his name.

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Intensification of fires and droughts

“There’s a lot of smoke, but I’m not too worried about the village because the surroundings have been cleared. On the other hand, there is scattered housing in the countryside and it’s more complicated for the firefighters”, said Marie-Eve Carette, who rents a cottage in the village.

In addition to the megafires in Gironde which destroyed thousands of hectares of forest, several fires also affected the South-East of France this summer. Last week, 150 hectares had been destroyed in Hérault and Aude. In the neighboring department of Gard, some 650 hectares of forest had also been ravaged in early July, while 1,600 hectares burned south of Avignon in mid-July.

The Hérault department was on Tuesday in “high” to “very high” fire risk depending on the massifs.

If summers are dry in the South, with global warming, the intensity of these episodes of drought is likely to increase further, according to UN climate experts.

In France, with global warming “the activity (of the fires) will intensify in the areas where it is already strong, in the south-east”, underlined Jean-Luc Dupuy, expert at the National Research Institute for agriculture, food and the environment (Inrae) at the end of June.

The risk of fire is maximum in France after a wave of heat wave. Ninety departments out of 96, a “record”, are subject to restrictions on the use of water on Tuesday.

To read : A summer in hell. From the Gironde to Provence, France is on fire

The forest fires that have raged in Europe in recent weeks, particularly in the west of the continent hit by heat waves, have already affected more area than during the whole of 2021, according to the European specialized monitoring service.





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