(Adnkronos) – Several locations in the south of France remain on high alert today, the third day of the largest wildfire of the summer, as flames continue to devastate thousands of hectares, although their intensity has diminished.
The wind that was pushing the flames towards the Mediterranean coast changed yesterday afternoon, diverting the danger towards the Corbières massif, and fifteen municipalities have already been directly or indirectly affected by the fire. “The rear of the fire has become the front,” said Colonel Christophe Magny, head of the Aude department’s fire brigade.
The front, still uncontrollable, is returning “to its starting point, in rather inaccessible wooded areas,” added the general secretary of the departmental Prefecture, Lucie Roesch. Starting Tuesday afternoon, in the village of Ribaute, between Carcassonne and Narbonne, the largest fire of the French summer devastated 16,000 hectares of vegetation and pine forests by yesterday evening, “more than the entire city of Paris,” according to Colonel Magny. It also destroyed or damaged 25 homes and burned 35 vehicles, according to the Prefecture’s provisional report.
In Saint-Laurent-de-la-Cabrerisse, in Aude (Occitania region), a 65-year-old woman who had refused to leave her home was found dead in her home, devastated by the flames. The Prefecture also reported 13 injured: two residents were hospitalized, one of whom suffered serious burns, and eleven firefighters were called to the scene, according to Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau.
As night fell yesterday, the fire, which Prime Minister François Bayrou described as a “catastrophe of unprecedented proportions”, “linked to global warming” and “drought”, was still burning. But its spread, which had previously been “a thousand hectares per hour”, was “decreasing in intensity”, Rémi Recio, sub-prefect of Narbonne, told AFP.
And the tramontana, the dry, hot wind that is intensifying the fire, has been replaced by a sea breeze that will blow again today and “will bring more humid air than before, which is less favorable to the spread of the fire,” François Gourand, meteorologist at Météo-France, told AFP. But while firefighters have protected residential areas, the communities involved are still concerned about a return of the flames, with the change in wind direction. “We are on high alert because we are surrounded by pines, and then all around the village has burned. It’s a disaster,” laments Bruno Zubieta, deputy mayor of Villesèque-des-Corbières, in Aude.
