Overlooking the fire front, in Fontjoncouse, an AFP photographer was able to see the fire progress very quickly in opaque smoke, while high flames fueled by the wind gnawed the crests of the hilly landscape of the Corbières massif, where many other homes continue to burn the pine forest and the vegetation.
“The fire is still very active and the situation is still unfavorable” due to drought, heat and strong wind, the secretary general of the Aude prefecture, Lucie Roesch told AFP.
The fire has traveled 15,000 hectares of garrigue and conifers in fifteen impacted municipalities, destroyed or damaged 25 homes as well as 35 vehicles, according to a still provisional assessment which does not yet specify the burned area.
An investigation was opened to determine the causes of fire, still unknown, which left shortly after 4:00 p.m. Tuesday in Ribaute, we learned from the Carcassonne prosecutor’s office. No hypothesis is currently privileged, according to Ms. Roesch.
Prime Minister François Bayrou goes there in the afternoon, as well as Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau and François-Noël Buffet, Minister to the Minister of the Interior.
Victim
In the most victimized commune, Saint-Laurent-de-la-Cabrerisse, where a resident was found dead in his house, an acre smell of burnt emerges from nearby hectares, while a helicopter loads water in the river below the village and the drop a few kilometers further, noted an AFP journalist.
David Cerdan, 51, lives a hundred meters from the deceased sixty -year -old who refused to leave his house on Tuesday evening. The deceased’s home is devastated, like many others near his home. “I put it into perspective, I only have material damage,” he said to AFP about his miraculously spared house, after the flames passed above the garden.
In this commune located 30 km from Narbonne, the family of another resident is without news of him, said Rémi Recio, sub-prefect of Narbonne. He also reported nine injured: two hospitalized civilians, one of whom, originally from Saint-Laurent, which was seriously burned, and seven firefighters who were poisoned by the smoke.
“The air is suffocating”
In the seaside resort of Port-la-Nouvelle, about thirty kilometers from the fire, “the air is suffocating, with this burnt smell that has infiltrated the dwellings during the night,” said a resident, Serge de Souza.
In the Corbières sky, four Canadair rotations, as well as three dash, two helicopters and two small Air Tractor devices, according to civil security.
A “colossal” device, according to the Narbonne sub-prefect, specifying that 2000 firefighters are supported by 500 equipment on the ground.
At this stage, this is the biggest fire in summer in France. At the end of July, in the middle of the summer season, civil security had recorded more than 15,000 hectares burned on the national territory for 9,000 fire departures, mainly on the Mediterranean coast.
“Stay confined”
The A9 motorway which runs along the Mediterranean coast between France and Spain has been closed in both directions, causing fifteen kilometers of traffic jams between Narbonne and Perpignan, as well as many departmental routes close to the fire.
More than 2,500 homes are still deprived of electricity and it is too early for the hundreds of residents evacuated Tuesday evening to return to their home, warned the prefecture. On the other side of the A9, two campsites had been evacuated as a precaution in the tourist town of La Palme.
The authorities reiterated their safety instructions to the population, calling for “remaining confined except order of evacuation given by the firefighters” and not to clutter the road network so as not to hinder the emergency services.
Mined by a persistent drought that easily makes the vegetation flammable, the department was placed in red vigilance with forest fires, with a very high risk of fire. Since June, several fires have taken place in Aude but also in the Bouches-du-Rhône, at the gates of Marseille, and in Hérault, in particular.
