“The fire spreads very quickly, because the weather conditions are unfavorable, it is one of the driest areas in the department and the wind is supported,” the Secretary General of the Aude prefecture, Lucie Roesch detailed at AFP.
“On the spot,” she adds, “the device continues to rise in power. Regarding the air means, we are as much as the national capacities, nine Canadair and five Dash, 980 firefighters on site and 130 in reinforcement. It is a loss of large scale. The night will be long”.
The spectacular fire in the south of France is stabilized but not yet fixed
Water bomber helicopters multiply the rotations to prevent the flames from reaching the dwellings of the villages of Lagrasse, Fabrezan, Tourissan, Coustouge, Saint-Laurent-de-la-Cabrerisse, sometimes in vain.
Call for prudence
Many departmental routes are closed to traffic to facilitate the work of firefighters.
“The evolution of the fire is unfavorable. The populations are asked to remain confined within their dwellings unless order of evacuation given by the firefighters,” insists the prefecture in a press release.
The prefect of Aude called for caution and to learn via official sources, without relaying “false information”.
The Aude department was placed on Tuesday in red vigilance with forest fires, with a “very high” risk of fire, while an episode of heat moved to the southwest of France, according to Météo-France.
Since the start of the summer, several fires have intervened in Aude, a department affected by drought and hot weather. One of them, at the beginning of July, the most important in the department since 1986, had traveled 2,000 hectares and mobilized nearly 1,000 firefighters near Narbonne.
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Assigned by the drought and the uprooting vines, which had a fire cutting function and slowed down the advance of the flames, the Aude has experienced a sharp increase in burnt surfaces in recent years.
“We were 300-400 hectares per year in the early 2000s,” said AFP last week Jean-Paul Baylac, in charge of forest fires at the departmental fire and rescue service of Aude.
“The wind should weaken in the night,” said Lucie Roesch, hoping that the decrease in the intensity of the tramontane, which blows from the northwest, will cease to stir up the flames.
