2023-04-17 08:48:19
It’s only mid-April, and the fears for the summer are already huge. A fire broke out this Sunday in Cerbère (Pyrénées-Orientales) and has since covered 930 hectares of vegetation, confirmed the prefecture of the department. In particular, it spread to Portbou, on the other side of the Spanish border, a town located 3 km from Cerbère.
The fire has been under control in France and Spain since about 2 a.m., said France Blue Roussillon, while 500 firefighters were mobilized at the height of the fire. However, it is not fixed yet. “We continue to treat the edges. With the day, the wind will pick up and we will check that there is no recovery in areas where the fire could be underlying, ”said a spokesperson for the firefighters.
In addition to the 200 firefighters from the Pyrénées-Orientales on the bridge, reinforcements have arrived from Haute-Garonne, Ariège, Aude, you Tarn, Gard and Hérault. The operations were also carried out with the support of the Bombers, the firefighters of Catalonia.
The 300 people who had been evacuated in the afternoon “have mostly been able to return to their homes”, underlined the prefecture of Pyrénées-Orientales. According to Christian Grau, the mayor of Cerbère, the fire did not cause any victims or injuries. “A few houses are damaged, but none destroyed”, he specified on Franceinfo, speaking however of an “ecological and economic disaster”.
“The first big fire of the year”
“It is a fire that we usually encounter during the summer, it is due to a context of drought and a particularly virulent wind”, explained Sunday afternoon Éric Belgioino, fire chief of the Pyrénées-Orientales. The task of the firefighters was made more complicated by the wind which was blowing at nearly 100 km / h, it notably prevented the use of Canadairs.
Asked about Franceinfo on Monday, Colonel Arnaud Wilm, spokesman for civil security, deplored “the first big fire of the year”. However, he too was reassuring about the evolution of the situation: “The fire is progressing very slowly, the temperature has dropped, the gusts of wind are less strong. It should be fixed in the next few hours, the worst is over. »
The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, arrived on site around 8:30 a.m. to meet the firefighters and follow the progress of the operations.
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