France: fire in the Aude: loss of intensity, but persistent ravages

Several Aude villages remain on the alert Thursday, on the third day of the biggest fire in the country in the country. The fire continues to ravage thousands of hectares, even if it has lost intensity.

The weather conditions on Thursday “are rather favorable at the start of the morning,” said the Aude firefighters. But gusts of wind up to “40 km/h are expected from 11:00 am”, they specify. “Our strategy is to” type fast and strong before this wind gets up. “

Air resources will be mobilized “all day long”, to treat the fire always active in various sectors, specify the firefighters. But its progression which was previously “1000 hectares at the hour overall”, “decreases in intensity,” said Rémi Recio, sub-prefect of Narbonne.

The wind which pushed the flames to the Mediterranean coastline turned on Wednesday afternoon, redirecting the danger to the Corbières massif and fifteen communes already directly or indirectly impacted by the loss.

The tramontane, a dry and warm wind that strengthens fire, has been supplanted by a sea wind that will still blow Thursday, and “will bring more humid air than before, which is less favorable to the spread of fire,” said François Gourand, forecaster in Météo-France.

But if the firefighters have protected the residential areas, the municipalities are nonetheless fearful of the flames with the change of wind direction. “We stay on the alert, because we are surrounded by pines and then that everything has burned, all around the village, it is the disaster,” deplores Bruno Zubieta, first deputy mayor of Villesèque-des-Corbières.