Nearly 10,000 people evacuated in the south of the department

by time news

Nearly 10,000 residents evacuated. In a new report drawn up at 6 p.m., the Gironde prefecture announced that the number of evacuees continued to increase during the day on Wednesday. The fire ravaging the Landes de Gascogne forest, in the south of the department, around Saint-Magne and Belin-Béliet, has destroyed 6,200 hectares since Tuesday.

“This fire surprises us, it generated its own wind, turned on itself and decided to continue its journey north, so much so that it burned areas that it had already burned” underlines the delegate prefect Martin Guespereau. According to him, these uncertainties justify this number of preventive evacuations. “It is impossible to know how the fire will progress overnight. »

A seriously burned firefighter

If the fire has now reached the Landes department, “it has especially widened on all sides, and with the increase in temperatures we have a fire which explodes in certain places, explains for his part the general controller Marc Vermeulen, director of Sdis 33. Currently we are faced with an axis of propagation towards the north, with the commune of Belin-Béliet which is threatened. »

Nearly 1,000 firefighters are now engaged on the ground. A few firefighters were slightly injured, and one was more seriously burned in the legs and face, said the delegate prefect. A new house burned down in the afternoon, bringing the number of houses affected to seventeen. Two fire engines were destroyed by the flames. The A 63 motorway remains partially closed.

“We are at the maximum risk of starting a fire, in a period of historic drought, still reminds Martin Guespereau. Do not go into the forest massifs for the next few days”, he implores, and to warn that “the gendarmes are out. »

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