Wildfires on the Riviera
Residents, tourists escape as crews, planes battle raging blazes in Riviera region
Sunbathers and swimmers leave the beach at Le Lavandou on the French Riviera under an evacuation order Wednesday as smoke from a wildfire billows over the southern Cote d’Azur region. Large areas of Mediterranean forest have been burned after three days of fires that have forced the evacuation of 12,000 people.
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 Cote d’Azur coast, also known as the French Riviera, and forced the evacuation of 12,000 people.
Large areas of Mediterranean forest have been left bare and blackened after three days of fires. About 250 trailer homes, a hangar, an artist studio and several vehicles were burned, 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 fire whipped by strong, dry winds spread from La Londe-Les-Maures to around the hilltop town of Bormes-Les-Mimosas. About 60 people were evacuated by boat from nearby Cap Benat.
“There will be more fires tomorrow,” Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said. He traveled to Bormes on Wednesday night, flew over the devastated region and met with firefighting personnel.
Firefighting aircraft made more than 500 drops of water or retardant on Wednesday, Philippe said, and only three fires remained active in the Var region — out of dozens that started Wednesday.
But “the situation remains difficult, I must say it. Like me, you feel the wind is blowing,” the prime minister said.
Farther south of the French mainland, flames ate through 4,950 acres of forest on the northern end of the French Mediterranean island of Corsica, in what was the largest blaze in France.
Fires also were 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 3,210 acres around Bormes. Four planes and a firefighting aircraft dropped water and retardant on the blazes.
The airport in Toulon, a city 18 miles from La Londe, was briefly closed Wednesday, as well the Fort de Bregancon, which sits on a rock off the coast of Bormes.
The wildfires began raging along France’s Mediterranean coast Monday, forcing smaller, scattered evacuations as flames reached a corner of Saint-Tropez. Since noon Tuesday, French firefighters had conducted about 100 operations.
Farther east, another 400 firefighters were battling a blaze in Artigues that burned up to 4,200 acres 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 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-Cotes 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 Tuesday. Still, a pilot of a Canadair firefighting aircraft said there were not enough planes in the sky.
Philippe said an investigation has been opened to identify the reasons for the multiple fires.
France’s Mediterranean coast is particularly vulnerable to fires, with its back-country forests, often dry in the summer, and hot, dry 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 more than 700 vehicles were battling 13 blazes, with flames driven by powerful winds.
In Italy, where wildfires have raged for weeks, firefighters responded to 26 requests for water and fire-retardant airdrops on Tuesday throughout central and southern Italy, including Calabria, Sicily, Sardinia, Lazio and Puglia.
The Coldiretti agriculture lobby said 50 million bees were destroyed along with their hives in fires on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius. Coldiretti said another 20 percent of the bee population is estimated to have become disoriented by all the smoke and died as a result.