France: the giant fire in the Aude is fixed, but the fight continues

The firefighters continue their fierce fight on Friday against a gigantic fire in the south of France which they managed to fix the day before in the evening, but which will not be extinguished for several days.

This fire, the most important for at least 50 years in the French Mediterranean, has traveled 17,000 hectares of vegetation in just over 48 hours and cost a person in the Aude department.

“The mobilization of firefighters will remain intense on the ground in the coming days”, according to the prefecture which prohibited access to forest massifs until Sunday included. For her, “the axes closed to traffic remain essentially not recognized and therefore potentially still dangerous, in particular due to the presence of electric cables on the roads”.

In this context, “the people affected without authorization from local authorities on the spot, cannot yet return to their home”. The prefect of Aude, Christian Pouget, said that some 2,000 evacuated people had not yet been able to return home.

Thursday, several hundred of them were still welcomed in the versatile rooms of several municipalities. Christian Pouget also said that the fire would not be “declared off for several days”, adding that there was “still a lot of work”.

More than 2,000 firefighters remain mobilized, with more than 200 gendarmes, supported by an air system.

Thursday evening, 1,500 households were still deprived of electricity, the ENEDIS network manager told AFP, for whom “immediate priority is to ensure the continuity of essential services”, such as access to water or telecommunications.

The fire also destroyed or damaged 36 dwellings and 54 vehicles, according to a provisional assessment of the prefecture.

Leaving Tuesday afternoon of the town of Ribaute, about forty kilometers from Narbonne and Carcassonne, on the side of a road, according to the first elements of the investigation, the flames traveled 17,000 hectares of pine forest and garrigue, of which 13,000 were burned, according to civil security.

It has been the worst fire for at least 50 years in the French Mediterranean, according to a government database listing forest fires since 1973.

In Saint-Laurent-de-la-Cabrerisse, a 65-year-old woman was found dead Wednesday at her home devastated by the flames. The prefecture also counted 18 injured: two hospitalized inhabitants, including a seriously burned, and 16 firefighters.

Thursday evening, the fire could finally be fixed. “It was a classic work but of an extraordinary magnitude,” the Aude firefighters told AFP.

The Carcassonne prosecutor’s office told AFP not to know its origin yet. In addition, the prefect estimated that “800 to 900 hectares” of vineyards had been lost.

“If we are not helped, we will not get up. It is a complete despair. This vineyard, all these years of work, is gone in smoke in an hour, “said AFP Fabien Vergnes, 52, in his 20 hectare property in Touristan, a few kilometers from Saint-Laurent.