In a press release, Georges-François Leclerc wanted to assume “all of the decisions” taken to protect the population from the violent fire which affected the second city in France.
Faced with the criticisms and anger of Marseillais victimized by the fire of July 8, the prefect of Bouches-du-Rhône published in the night of Wednesday to Thursday an unusual development where he “Assumes all decisions” taken.
Georges-François Leclerc “Wanting to react to these accused, which do not reflect the reality of the effective and heroic commitment of our fire and rescue forces. He assumes all of the decisions that have been made in order to guarantee and above all succeed in protecting the population ”wrote the prefecture in a press release. This violent fire had left on Tuesday July 8 in the middle of the morning of a car that caught fire on the edge of the Pennes-Mirabeau motorway. Faced with a violent and swirling wind, the fire had then quickly jumped from one hill to another, on vegetation dried up by several days of heat wave, to arrive in the 16the Marseille arrondissement, in the northern districts.
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In the end, he traveled 750 hectares and if he was not “No human loss” in “No seriously injured” As the prefect points out, the assessment is still heavy on the side of the victims with 91 affected buildings including 60 destroyed or made uninhabitable. But he insists: “Nearly a thousand homes could have been saved from the flames”.
Anger of the victims
Tuesday evening, during a meeting where the press was not invited, organized by the town hall of Marseille in the Estaque district, the anger of the victims spoke, several participants brought to AFP. “The operational framework was very constrained”today is justified the prefect, with other fires that day in the south of France and in particular that of Narbonne which in the end 2100 hectares in Aude in the end.
At 12:27 p.m., the prefect had taken over the rescue department “Because this fire was singular by its violence and because it now concerned two municipalities”specifies the prefecture in its press release Wednesday evening. “It is the first time in the history of fires in Marseille that a prefect takes command”underlined Samia Ghali, deputy mayor of the city, with AFP.
“The anger of the victims is legitimate, it is a question of trying to understand why they were told to remain confined when there is fire in front of their door” And why residents see firefighters from the Alpes-Maritimes arrive, who do not know these steep districts like the firefighters in Marseille, she explains to AFP. In total, 875 firefighters from Bouches-du-Rhône and firefighters from Marseille had been deployed, reinforced by 500 firefighters from other departments, supported by 260 vehicles and 17 airlines.