Ash still covered the streets of Cotignac on Wednesday morning after a wildfire that broke out the previous afternoon tore through the medieval cliffside village in the heart of Provence, destroying nearly 60 homes and burning thousands of hectares across five communes overnight.
The fire started in a field near the village of Pontevès on Tuesday and spread rapidly northward, driven by wind and drought, before reaching Cotignac during the night.
By dawn it had burned through the nearby communes, bringing in more than 900 firefighters with reinforcements from across southern France, including Marseille's naval pompiers.
Four people were injured — two firefighters and two civilians. Around 500 residents were evacuated across the affected communes by Wednesday afternoon. Thousands of homes lost electricity, the majority in Cotignac itself.
The village, which regularly wins recognition as one of France's most beautiful and whose summer population swells from around 2,500 to nearly 10,000, was the hardest hit.
