The two fires in progress since Tuesday afternoon in the south of the Gironde strengthened in the night, whereas they had burned, Tuesday at the end of the day, more than 1,200 ha of pine forest. The most important of the two, which broke out near Landiras, about forty kilometers south of Bordeaux, covered 800 ha of forest. While Tuesday, only 150 people had been evacuated from the hamlets around the town of Guillos, 520 people left their homes this Wednesday morning and are waiting to know what will happen to them.
According to the firefighters, the fire started around 4 p.m. on “complicated terrain” and by a “swirling wind”, which made their intervention difficult. Tuesday evening, the plume of smoke was visible from the Bordeaux conurbation
By nightfall, the two Dashes and the two Canadairs mobilized had made about fifty drops. They resumed their rotation at daybreak, with air reinforcements expected in the morning. The system has been greatly increased, from 50 to 147 vehicles and nearly 320 firefighters, from Gironde, Charente-Maritime, Landes, Lot-et-Garonne and Limousin.
The other ongoing fire in Gironde, which broke out around 3 p.m. in the town of La Teste-de-Buch, from a car traveling on a forest road in the user forest of La Teste, consumed 445 ha near the Dune du Pilat, in the Arcachon basin, according to the latest report from the firefighters. Despite the mobilization of three water bombers and some 200 firefighters and 95 vehicles who worked all night, the fire continued to grow.
“We are living through a disaster”
“There was a shift in the wind to the East around 1 a.m.,” explained this Wednesday morning to Sud Ouest the commander of the fire brigade Laurent Dellac, in charge of communication for the Departmental Fire and Rescue Service ( Sdis) from Gironde. “We have winds at 35 km/h which are turning, so the fire is going towards areas that have not yet burned. We are going through a disaster, I am very affected, very touched, ”explained to France Info Patrick Davet, the mayor of La Teste-de-Buch.
When the wind shifted, the authorities took the decision to evacuate five campsites, all located near the Dune du Pilat. Some 6,000 people were therefore evacuated by the police and municipal employees to the La Teste exhibition center and the Leclerc supermarket in La Teste. A hundred motorhomes were also evacuated to Biscarrosse.
An action also made it possible “to ensure the safeguard of a dozen heads of oil wells of the Vermilion company, which are in the forest”, according to the fire officer. At the time, “all the cabins distributed in the forest were not affected”.
Five departments in the south-west – Gironde, Lot-et-Garonne, Tarn-et-Garonne, Tarn, Haute-Garonne – remain on heatwave orange vigilance until at least 6 a.m. Thursday.