It was already at the Pennes-Mirabeau that an important claim had left on July 8, after a car had caught fire on the A55, further east. The fire had then traveled 750 hectares of brush and pine forests and reached Marseille, ravaging around sixty buildings in total in the Estaque district.
Faced with this new disaster that traveled 11 hectares on Monday, 400 firefighters were mobilized, helped by 100 ground machines and significant air resources, with four Canadair, two Dash planes and two water bombers helicopters, according to the prefecture.
The fire that has declared itself in a tourism sector in the south of France is stabilized but not yet fixed
The objective was to avoid the spread of fire “towards the star massif”, which borders the city of Marseille to the north, and to “protect any homes”, explained the firefighters.
At the end of the evening on Monday, the fire soldiers continued to “perfect the extinction of residual households nearby” from the affected company.
In the first kilometers near the fire, the Air Air quality measurement body noted “high levels of fine and ultrafine particles” and “high concentrations of multiple gaseous pollutants”.
“We are on the nerves”
Beyond the major road trafficking disruptions, Marseille-Provence Airport in Marignane was also impacted with in particular the interruption of landings for a little over an hour, but “traffic has taken up for,” said the prefecture.
Contacted by AFP, the staff of the specialized reception center for adults with disabilities of the turrets, located in a large area tree, at seven-les-vallons, had confirmed to AFP that the firefighters were on site and that the instructions were to remain confined.
Between staff and residents, around fifty people were on the scene late Monday afternoon.
On the other side of the interchange between the two highways, to the north, the Lemon hotel was also at the forefront of the loss: “We see big plumes of smoke from the windows, and for the moment we are alone so we are on the nerves”, had testified to AFP on the phone Bahija Kermoun, 51, responsible for the establishment.
“At times, depending on the orientation of the wind, you have the impression that there is no more sun so dark. We have not yet received any evacuation instruction, so we are waiting, but we fortunately have few customers during the day,” she continued.
The Bouches-du-Rhône prefecture had given safety instructions to the inhabitants of the two municipalities in their mobile phones, via a FR-Alert message, before announcing the end of the alert at 9:30 p.m.
In red vigilance with forest fires for the third consecutive day, the Bouches-du-Rhône department was struck by an important Mistral on Monday, with gusts sometimes reaching 90 km/h.
Around Marseille, two other fires mobilized hundreds of firefighters on Martiigues and Port-de-Bouc. But both were “set” on Monday afternoon on Monday and driving operations were underway during the evening.
Ten days after the fire from the Pennes-Mirabeau on July 8, another claim had devoured nearly 250 hectares of pine forest in Martigues, northwest of Marseille.
