An investigation was opened on Friday with the Tarascon prosecutor’s office on the fire which covered 1000 hectares of a forest massif south of Avignon and devoured at least 300. It was fixed overnight from Thursday to Friday but “remain active on the right flank”, announced the firefighters who are doubling caution with the announced mistral. He managed to reach hard-to-reach areas, in the Montagnette massif, two-thirds covered with Aleppo pines located south of Avignon, the firefighters also indicated. For its part, the parquet floor of Tarascon (Bouches-du-Rhône) has opened an investigation for involuntary fire. “It is a priori an accidental fire, but which started under conditions which remain to be specified. “Reported the prosecutor of Laurent Gumbau.
“Unfavorable event: the mistral will rise for two days,” he added. In addition, the neighboring departments of Gard and Vaucluse are on heat wave alert. Some 800 people will therefore remain mobilized for at least 24 hours to “ensure daily missions and fire attacks”.
Sparks generated on the railway
This fire, which destroyed at least 300 hectares, started Thursday 14 in the afternoon from sparks generated on the railway by a freight train which set the vegetation ablaze. Four municipalities, Tarascon, Barbentane, Graveson and Boulbon have made rooms available for possible evacuees.
Last week, 650 hectares of forest had burned in neighboring Gard and since Tuesday relief workers have been fighting two very large forest fires in Gironde, with some 7,000 hectares devastated.
Is it due to a technical failure? A brake failure? The investigators have started their investigations but the dangerous materials transported will first have to be moved before the start of the expertise, said the prosecutor.
This train “caused nine fire starts”, said Lieutenant-Colonel Pierre Bisone, of the Bouches-du-Rhône firefighters, Friday morning to AFP, saying that everything would be “probably linked to a clog locked brake” on the machine.