French wildfires force mass evacuations
Blazes scorch the Riviera for third day, tear through forests along Mediterranean coast
BORMES-LES-MIMOSAS, FRANCE— Backed by planes dropping water and fire retardant, more than 1,000 firefighters battled wildfires Wednesday that billowed smoke into the sky over France’s southern Côte d’Azur coast and forced the evacuation of 12,000 people.
Large swaths of Mediterranean forest have been left bare and blackened after three days of fires. About 250 trailer homes, a hangar, an atelier and several vehicles were burned in the blazes but no one so far has been injured, according to the prefect of the Var region.
The residents and tourists were evacuated early Wednesday after a ferocious fire whipped by strong Mistral winds spread from La Londe-les-Maures to around the picturesque hilltop town of Bormesles-Mimosas. About 60 people were evacuated by boat from nearby Cap Bénat.
Prime Minister Edouard Philippe travelled to Bormes on Wednesday night to fly over the devastated region and meet with firefighters and evacuees staying in gyms and other public spaces. Dozens spent Tuesday night on the nearby La Lavandou beach.
Further south of the French mainland, flames ate through 2,000 hectares of forest on the northern end of the French Mediterranean island of Corsica, in what was the largest blaze in France.
Tourist Françoise Roparse, who was visiting the south of France, was among the evacuees awakened in the middle of the night who found shelter in a sailing club near Bormes.
“First, it was a bit the panic,” Roparse said. “We tried to gather all important things . . . Obviously, we forgot a lot.”
The local government provided food for those forced from homes, about 2,500 sandwiches, fruit and drinks, community centre director Nathalie Franche said.
Regional governments were espe- cially challenged because their economies depend on tourism. The fires hit at the height of the summer season.
Fires were also blazing across parts of bone-dry Portugal and Italy.
As thick black smoke billowed above the crests of hills, Col. Eric Martin of the Var firefighting unit told BFM-TV that French crews were trying to contain the flames that had run through 1,300 hectares around Bormes. Four planes and a firefighting aircraft dropped water and retardants on the blazes.
The airport in Toulon, a city 30 kilometres from La Londe, was briefly closed on Wednesday, as well the Fort de Brégançon, which sits on a rock off the coast of Bormes.
The wildfires began raging along France’s Mediterranean coast on Monday, forcing smaller, scattered evacuations as flames reached a corner of Saint-Tropez. Since noon Tuesday, French firefighters had conducted about 100 operations.
Further east, another 400 firefighters were battling a blaze in Artigues that burned up to 1,700 hectares of forest. In addition, a fire that was contained Tuesday evening in La Croix Valmer after burning two homes and leaving one firefighter seriously injured restarted on Wednesday, the Var prefecture said.
Firefighters said they were exhausted and needed more manpower and equipment. Hundreds of reinforcements were sent in from around France but the president of the Provence-Alpes-Côtes d’Azur area, Renaud Muselier, said on BFM-TV that “we don’t have enough means.”
France asked the European Union for more firefighting planes and Italy provided one on Tuesday. Still, a pilot of a Canadair firefighting aircraft said there were not enough planes in the sky.
Marion Manent, whose husband’s trailer homes were burned, was suspicious about the origins of the fire around La Londe.
“Someone is certainly responsible . . . for me, he is a killer,” she told BFM-TV.
France’s Mediterranean coast is particularly vulnerable to fires, with its massive backcountry forests, often dry in the summer, and hot Mistral winds blowing across the sea to fan the flames.
In central Portugal on Wednesday, billowing smoke was making visibility too poor to use water-dropping aircraft on the region’s flaming dense pine and eucalyptus forests. More than 2,300 firefighters with over 700 vehicles were battling 13 blazes, with flames driven by powerful winds.
The worst-hit areas are 200 kilometres northeast of Lisbon, where the fires briefly forced the evacuation of some hamlets and the closure of a section of highway.
Portugal’s peak fire season, which usually occurs after July 1, began early this year amid a severe drought. Last month, 64 people died trying to flee a forest fire in Pedrogao Grande.