FRANCE IN FLAMES
Britons flee as wildfires burn out of control on the Riviera
TERRIFIED British holidaymakers were among thousands forced to flee wildfires that burned out of control in the South of France yesterday .
Dramatic photographs showed flames leaping at least 50ft from a hillside near Marseille and thick layers of smoke dimming the skies of the city as the blazes wreaked chaos.
At least 25 homes were destroyed, roads were closed and flights delayed as nearly 2,000 firefighters, supported by helicopters and aircraft equipped with water tanks, tackled blazes in several locations in the region.
Farmers led horses and other livestock to safety as the flames closed in.
David Roper, 46, an Englishman in the area with his wife and two young children, said yesterday morning: ‘It is an absolute disaster area. Roads are being closed and we are being told to start heading north.
‘There are apparently some very strong winds whipping up the flames, and it could get worse.
‘It was like the end of the world’
We’re getting out.’ The fires first took hold in several areas on Wednesday afternoon. Those near Marseille, France’s second largest city, began to the north of its suburbs.
Stoked by the Mistral, the wind that blows towards the sea in the South of France, they quickly spread over more than 8,150 acres of scrubland and wooded areas.
The homes destroyed were in the town of Vitrolles, about 15 miles north of Marseille.
More than 1,000 people were evacuated in several towns, including Vitrolles and nearby Pennes-Mirabeau.
Three people were reported to have suffered burns, as the fire moved towards the city. One victim suffered serious injuries.
‘It was a scene really like the end of the world,’ Caroline Vidal, a Vitrolles resident who fled her home and saw people running on the highway to escape, told iTele TV.
Another resident of Vitrolles told French television news channel BFM-TV. ‘Everything burned, the house, the car... there is nothing left.’ Two
motorways and many minor roads were shut, and some flights cancelled at Marseille airport.
Marseille deputy mayor Julien Ruas said fire breaks had been created on the approaches to the city.
He said: ‘The fire is extremely powerful, fast, explosive, and continues burning everything in its path.’
Four firefighters were injured, one seriously, battling a blaze further west in the neighbouring Herault region when their vehicle was surrounded by flames.
Discarded cigarettes or illegal barbecues are the usual reason for such wildfires.
Low winter rainfall and a particularly hot spring have left the scrubland extremely dry.
Stephane Poyau, from the French firefighters’ union SNSPP-PATS, said: ‘When it is so dry and the wind is 80 to 100kmph it’s impossible to stop the fire. All you can do is slow it down and try to protect buildings and people.’
He said the only natural way a fire could start was through lightning strikes, so accidents or malicious acts were almost certainly to blame. Marseille’s fire chief, Richard Mallie, told a local radio station: ‘The drought of the last few months and the strong Mistral winds worked like a powder keg.
‘The fires spread at phenomenal speed, 2,500 metres an hour.’
The fires are the latest threat to the tourist industry in France which has already suffered the impact of a terrorist attack in Nice, football violence at Euro 2016 in Marseille and strikes by workers protesting at President Hollande’s planned labour reforms.
Last night firefighters had contained the flames on the northern outskirts of Marseille, but remained on alert as more windy conditions were expected.
A spokesman for the local fire service said the area was ‘still extremely dangerous, as the fires can take hold again in an instant.’
The French blazes come after forest fires killed four people on the Portuguese holiday island of Madeira, where several homes and a hotel were damaged.