Christian Puech, a resident of Montbazin, avoided the worst during the fire that broke out in Cournonsec on Monday July 28. Part of his garden was burned. He tells us that night.
He almost lost everything in the fire of Cournonsec which traveled 320 hectares on Monday July 28. Christian Puech, photographer and explorer, lives in Montbazin. He was a few meters from the fire.
“I saw the flames coming”
“I was working and when I opened the window, I felt a smoke. I said to my wife, prepare your things, we go.” After taking him safely on the M5, Christian Puech returned home to defend his house against the flames. “No firefighter had yet happened to my house. So I stayed and I started to water the shutters and my garden”. Derisory means in the face of the scale of the fire. “The fire was about 100 meters from my house. With the wind, I saw the flames arriving towards my land”he specifies.
Defend your house at all costs
After a few minutes, a firefighter helicopter flies over his property. “He gave me the order by a loudspeaker to leave the premises, otherwise I was going to die”. Ready to do anything to defend his terrain, Christian Puech does not give up, even if he puts himself in danger. He stayed there until gendarmes evacuate him. “They took me by the arms and told me that it was the last minutes and that I could not go further”. After alerting the firefighters that the fire spread towards his home, two tanker trucks arrived on the scene and positioned themselves just in front of his land.
Back home around midnight
Christian Puech was able to return home around midnight, once the fire was fixed by the firefighters. This Tuesday, July 29, was the time to find the damage. The front of his land was completely burned. “Leaving, I immediately thought of the cypresses I planted. There are about 100. Fortunately only one of them was affected.” Thanks to the rapid intervention of fire soldiers, his house was spared. “It hurts me a lot because it is because of the man”. A fervent defender of biodiversity and the environment, Christian Puech greets the intervention of the firefighters who avoided the worst: “They did a great job. They are defenders of nature”rejoices the Montbazinois. “What I defend is life, vegetation. It’s not me. You know, the houses we don’t take them with us”he concludes.
