The summer megafires have now been fixed for more than a week but “not yet completely under control”. The Gironde, the department most affected by the flames with several tens of thousands of hectares of forests ravaged since the beginning of the summer, remains on the alert. Orange vigilance (level 3 on a scale of 5) was reactivated on Tuesday for “risk of forest fires”. Traffic and parking, but also recreational and sporting activities, are, until further notice, prohibited between 2 p.m. and 10 p.m. on forest tracks, rural roads, farm roads and cycle paths in the 159 predominantly forest municipalities of the department. .
If “the weather forecasts indeed suggest more favorable conditions in the coming days, the risks remain very significant due to the dry state of the massif, with a lack of precipitation and high temperatures”, we explain. at the prefecture, while it was 35 ° C this Wednesday afternoon in Bordeaux. Three hundred firefighters and seventy intervention trucks monitor and deal with the appearance of the slightest spark. Vigilance is necessary as dozens of fire outbreaks are recorded every day.
“We are not out of the woods”
“We did not get out of the woods because they were very much in demand by the appearance of hot spots, around 300 per day”, notes Major Laurent Dellac, officer in the departmental fire and rescue service (Sdis). These “hot spots”, sometimes identifiable by small rising smoke, are underground hearths that appear without warning. “The fires created these areas of ash and smoking peat which, together with lignite, a kind of natural coal present in the ground, burns at very high temperatures and can form dangerous holes, continues the officer. You have to water them for several days to get rid of them. The earth is so hot in some places that it is impossible to put your hand on it. »
The Sdis plans to maintain this system for many more weeks, until a saving rain comes to extinguish any risk of a new start. A few stormy rains, expected this Thursday and Friday morning, will somewhat calm the ardor of these outbreaks but will most certainly be insufficient to raise the alert level. “It will take at least seven days of abundant and almost continuous rain for us to find a less perilous situation,” said Commander Laurent Dellac.