A fire broke out late Thursday morning in the commercial area south of Arles, local media reported. 150 firefighters were already mobilized around 11 p.m., against the flames of this fire, which was described as “unfavorable”, “fanned by a violent wind”, pending the reinforcements of 350 additional men. In the evening, the firefighters were preparing to fight all night against this “mega fire”.
At the start of the evening, it was above all a fire “in very unfavorable evolution”, “in dense vegetation”, towards the remote hamlet of Bordezac, in the Cévennes massif, north of the Gard, which worried the emergency services. Started around 5 p.m., the fire had already affected 400 to 500 hectares around 8 p.m., according to firefighters. “This fire is, how to say, a mega fire”, explained to AFP the commander Tanguy Sagères, in charge of communication of the firefighters of Gard.
Driven by a strong Mistral, the fire had quickly spread to finally jump National 113, a strategic axis ensuring the junction of the A54 between Nîmes and Marseille, and cut it in both directions. At 8 p.m., the fire was fixed and the RN113 was able to reopen. The firefighters, however, remained on site “for drowning and surveillance”, they explained to AFP, but they no longer feared a resumption of fire. Four houses were burned, according to an initial relief report, and four others damaged.
In the area, water bombers and up to 185 firefighters engaged in a kind of “urban guerrilla warfare” to “do everything” to prevent the fire from reaching nearby homes or businesses. At least eight houses were damaged but several hundred were able to be preserved, according to firefighters contacted by AFP, who wanted to be reassuring around 5 p.m., believing that the situation was changing favorably.
The town hall of Arles indicated that a DIY store was affected by the fire and had to be evacuated, in this city which hosts from July 4 to September 25 “Les Rencontres d’Arles”, a photography festival, which had won 12,000 visitors in 2021.
“A multiplicity of fire starts”
Hundreds of firefighters fought this Thursday afternoon “a multiplicity of fire starts” in the Gard and the Bouches-du-Rhône, in “extreme” conditions, facing a strong mistral and soils victims of an early drought . At the end of the afternoon, the Bouches-du-Rhône firefighters also faced two other fire starts, one in Martigues; the other at Puy-Sainte-Réparade, above Aix-en-Provence. In total more than 160 firefighters were mobilized. At the end of the day, the fire in Martigues was “over”, according to the firefighters of Bouches-du-Rhône.
The gusts reached up to 85 km / h this Thursday in the Bouches-du-Rhône, where the prefecture had prohibited access to the 25 massifs of the department, from the National Park of the creeks to the Alpilles very close to Arles . On the other side of the Rhône, on the Gard side, some 120 firefighters were mobilized in the town of Générac for a fire. During this intervention, a firefighter was slightly injured and evacuated to a hospital.
Faced with this fire which covered 150 hectares of low vegetation and pines, 50 machines and 120 men were mobilized. It was on the territory of this same commune of Générac that the pilot of a Tracker 22 lost his life in August 2019 while fighting a violent fire which had burned 800 hectares of vegetation.
The fire would have started during outdoor work, by a person using a brush cutter, according to France bleu. “Using a brushcutter in such weather, very hot, very dry and very windy, cannot be called otherwise”, declared the mayor of the commune Frédéric Touzellier, who has the firm intention of filing a complaint.
The south of France has to deal with an extreme and early drought with many areas on heightened alert or even in crisis, such as in the Bouches-du-Rhône or the Alpes-Maritimes, measures accompanied by numerous restrictions. As of Wednesday, the firefighters had asked for responsible behavior in the face of a risk of forest fires “at the highest” for this Thursday. They had then warned that the wind should not weaken on Friday.