40,000 people have been evacuated from the very popular Cap-Ferret peninsula, by land and by sea, due to the "largest fire of the season", according to the Interior Minister, which is devastating the forest in Gironde but also in the nearby Landes. The fire, which started on Wednesday in Saumos (Gironde), is advancing through a dense pine forest and threatening the wooded Cap-Ferret peninsula, and has already "covered more than 10,000 hectares", Laurent Nuñez told AFP, calling it "the largest fire of the season". For the moment, there are no victims, but "80 houses have been burned, about fifty of which were destroyed", the minister specified. According to the municipality of Arcachon, more than 400 people have already arrived by boat from the peninsula, with several hundred people disembarking at the pier with their luggage.
The evacuation plan, prepared in 2023 by local authorities, was designed to evacuate "10,000 to 14,000 people in 24 hours, prioritizing vulnerable people", according to the Gironde prefecture. It was activated in the face of the advancing fire, probably of accidental origin, apparently linked to a brush-clearing operation in Saumos according to various sources, and whose scale rekindles the specter of the mega-fires of summer 2022 in the department. A firefighter intervening in Lège was injured by an explosion, probably from a gas cylinder. No new injuries were reported this morning, the prefecture specified. According to the Fire Department (Sdis) 30, the "drought of the massif is worse than in 2022", when almost 30,000 hectares burned, making the firefighting conditions "more difficult". Faced with a situation "under very strong tension", President Emmanuel Macron announced overnight that he had requested the activation of the European Union's civil protection mechanism and had obtained the reinforcement of aerial means that should arrive "rapidly". In parallel, another fire was ignited by a vehicle yesterday afternoon near Biscarrosse (Landes) and quickly spread, covering more than 2,500 hectares up to the city gates and leading to the evacuation of 23,000 people, according to the Sdis of Landes.This morning, the prefecture described a "very evolving and unfavorable situation". Approximately 600 firefighters are mobilized. The prefect of Landes, Gilles Clavreul, described to AFP, from the fire command center, a fire that "is currently on a front of about 10-15 km in the municipality of Biscarrosse, which is located in the inland part of the municipality, Biscarrosse-Bourg or Biscarrosse-Ville. And almost the entire Bourg is in the immediate vicinity of the flames". "The artisanal zone of Biscarrosse has been heavily affected" and the assessment of material damage "is ongoing", added Clavreul. One of the city's entrances is deserted, closed to traffic and enveloped in a fog of smoke and a suffocating smell of burning. Only fire department tanker trucks are circulating, in a scenario of a road lined with charred pine trunks. Colonel Romain Moutard, deputy director of Sdis 40, fears an "even more critical day" today because "the wind is strengthening and changing direction", after an "apocalyptic fire" Thursday.According to the Interior Minister, "we currently have 32 fires ongoing, which obviously do not all have the same importance". "We have exceeded the threshold of 50,000 hectares that have been burned since January 1st of this year. So, if you take the reference compared to last year, it's almost triple", he told AFP. In the southeast, Var firefighters are counting on more favorable weather to work on "controlling and extinguishing" the fire that has been ongoing for four days, but still consider it "premature" to "contain it", while in Haute-Corse a campsite was preventively evacuated. Forests catch fire more easily as vegetation and land have been very dry for months, a phenomenon exacerbated by recent exceptional heatwaves. According to a study published Thursday by climatologists from the World Weather Attribution group, climate change caused by human activities makes the current drought more severe. The fires occur after two firefighters died on Tuesday, during a fire near Bordeaux airport, following a previous death in Savoie at the beginning of July. Professional unions denounce a lack of resources and the "exhaustion" of the troops.
