TOURIST TERROR AS FIRES SWEEP EUROPE
UP TO 10,000 people including 3,000 tourists have fled wildfires that continued to rage in the South of France yesterday.
Hundreds of holidaymakers slept on beaches as the flames spread across swathes of Provence.
Authorities cleared residents and tourists camping and caravanning around the Var area early yesterday.
Best-selling novelist Robert Harris was forced to leave his villa in Cap Benat and posted regular updates on Twitter. His first tweet at 2.50am was a lighthearted: “Adds a certain drama to a holiday.”
But he updated with tributes to the hundreds of firefighters battling to save the area around Le Lavandou, La Londe-les-Maures and the coastal village of Bormes-les-Mimosas, saying: “Brave pompiers of Bormes-les-Mimosas worked all night to save hundreds of homes.”
Ferocious
Dame Joan Collins was another of the famous names forced to flee as the blaze grew ferocious, tweeting it had been a “nightmare”.
Four tracker planes and a firefighting aircraft had formed part of the emergency response after the intensity of the fire grew.
At least 12 firefighters have been injured and 15 police officers affected by smoke inhalation since the fires broke out on Monday, according to official figures.
The French blazes are just one of a number of wildfires fuelled by a heatwave which have swept across wide areas around the Mediterranean including Italy, Spain, Portugal, Corsica, Croatia and Turkey.
Tuesday night’s blaze in Provence, which started in a caravan storage depot, was started deliberately, authorities believe. But other fires have been blamed on carelessly discarded cigarettes.
Tourist Anna Tomlinson posted online that visitors had been “so, so, lucky” the fires did not “overwhelm” the campsite and local houses, adding that the firefighters were “heroes”.
Travel journalist Lisa Minot, who was on holiday at the scene, said: “The fires have been going all night, our campsite has its own beach and at two o’clock in the morning they evacuated everybody.
“There are about 1,000 pitches in the campsite, they evacuated everyone down to the beach and we have been here ever since.
“There are very strong winds and this is what is hampering the efforts to fight the fire, because they really cannot predict where the flames are going to go next.”
Local emergency services said flames had engulfed about 4,000 hectares (9,880 acres) of land in Southern France, where the population swells during the summer with people flocking to popular tourist resorts. British tourists are known to have been caught up in the emergency with more expected to travel to the area over the next few days.
The French government turned to its European neighbours for help and Italy, which had to tackle blazes near Rome and Naples in recent days, sent two firefighting planes to join the effort.
As well as mainland France, Corsica and Italy, high temperatures and dry, windy conditions have resulted in thousands of small wildfires and a few large blazes in Croatia, Montenegro, Spain and Portugal. In western Turkey, around 300 hectares of forest and woodlands in the province of Izmir was ablaze. Fires have destroyed at least 673 hectares across Turkey since July 1.