The fire which has ravaged 650 ha of forest since Thursday in the Cévennes, in the north of the Gard, is now “under control”, tells us this Saturday afternoon Commander Alexandre Jouassard, national spokesperson for the firefighters. That is to say that it “can no longer progress” and that all the “hot spots are extinguished”.
The next step is therefore the complete extinction of the fire. “The teams are carrying out the flooding of the area”, specifies the officer. It remains under the high surveillance of the firefighters, in particular because of the winds. However, with a reduced device for the night from Saturday to Sunday, after a day marked by a single resumption of fire. About 350 firefighters will remain mobilized on the ground.
The fire had been “fixed” since this Saturday morning, after several alerts. During the night from Friday to Saturday, the firefighters have already had to deal with two recoveries of the fire. Referring to the rule of “three thirty” crucial to qualify the dangerousness of a fire, Colonel Agrinier, in charge of communication for the Gard firefighters, thus underlined that for this fire in Bessèges and Bordezac, in the north of Gard, “the wind is over 30 km/h, the temperature over 30 degrees and the percentage of humidity in the air particularly low, up to 13% in the afternoon in the area”, for a hydrometry that ‘we consider worrying below 30%.
Tonight, firefighters expect 40 km / h of gusty winds, temperatures around 20 to 25 degrees and hydrometry still low, 30%. In total, 520 firefighters and 150 vehicles were mobilized on this “mega-fire”, according to the term used by the emergency services mobilized on the site. Leaving the hamlet of Bordezac around 5:00 p.m. Thursday, this disaster mobilized up to 950 men, but caused no casualties.
The firefighters still have air support on site, in particular to “deal with inaccessible hot spots with surgical strikes from helicopters”, said Lieutenant-Colonel Agrinier. “We are also currently studying the possibility of transporting pipes to these inaccessible places, by helicopter, to then treat the edges as closely as possible with men on the ground”, he added.
“As soon as there is a fire that begins to be more or less fixed, there is another that appears.
“As long as there are hot spots and we are not sure of the weather conditions, the wind, that there are fire swings, we cannot say that the fire is under control”, insists the Commander Jallet. The prefect of Gard indicates in a situation report that vigilance remains “active”. However, the confinement of the inhabitants of Bordezac has been lifted and the RD 51 and RD 184 have reopened.
According to Jean Rampon, sub-prefect of Alès, interviewed on franceinfo, “We remain very vigilant (…) we do not know how to predict or risk starting the fire”.
550 firefighters still mobilized
Météo France had placed the Gard on Friday “on maximum alert for forest fires” due to the heat, gusts of wind and vegetation weakened by extreme and early drought. 550 firefighters from all over France remained mobilized overnight from Friday to Saturday to ensure that this dozen fire starts did not evolve further.
“We are working the fire on its edges, but it will be a very long fire to finish because there are kilometers of edges. We will be able to speak of a controlled fire when there is no longer any risk of resumption. But with the very unfavorable weather conditions we are facing, it may not be before Sunday, ”said Lieutenant-Colonel Éric Agrinier, communications officer for the Gard firefighters, on Friday.
Access to forests prohibited
Regarding the damage, “fortunately, there were no homes affected”, welcomes Jean Rampon, sub-prefect of Ales. According to him, the fires mainly affected the wooden poles, necessary for the landline telephone lines.
VIDEO. In the heart of the mega fire of Gard
The State representative also explains why access to the garrigue and forests of the Gard has been prohibited for the next few days: “The fewer people we have in the mountains, the less they are exposed to fires”. This measure should also make it possible to prevent new outbreaks of human-caused fires.