a Gard firefighter who went as reinforcement testifies to “a fire that will mark history”

Some 8,000 people are on Monday in the process of “preventive evacuation” of two districts of La Teste-de-Buch, in the Arcachon basin, in Gironde, a department hit by two gigantic fires since Tuesday, announced the prefecture. “The fire just skipped runway 214“, south of this city of 26,000 inhabitants, “unsteady wind“, indicates a press release. The two districts concerned are that of Miquelots (about 5,000 people), in the south of the city, as well as that further west of Pyla-sur-Mer (about 3,000 people). In the face, the Gard firefighters have sent reinforcements.At present, a tanker and six firefighters are on site.

Before that, a team of five firefighters specialized in tactical fire stayed 48 hours on the Landiras fire at the end of last week. Among them Lieutenant-Colonel Nicolas Coste, head of the Cévennes Aigoual group, specialist in tactical fire. In forty years of career, he had never seen a fire of this magnitude in France: “I have witnessed many large fires in my career. But of such a surface very little. In Australia in 2020, in Macedonia in 2021 .”

“It is a fire that will mark the history of major forest fires. We have in reference in these territories, in the South-West, a devastating fire in 1949. 82 victims at the time. It is one of the biggest fires in Aquitaine”, Lieutenant-Colonel Nicolas Coste, on France Bleu Gard Lozère

A fire of such magnitude that under the current conditions, drought, wind and heat, it is almost impossible to turn it off according to the experienced firefighter: “When working in a sector and looking to the north, we see plumes as far as the eye can see that emerge in the sky, and then in the opposite direction too, it gives a notion of the extent of this disaster.“.

“We could put all the water we want, we must recognize at a certain moment that we have such firepower that it is very difficult or even impossible to stop it spontaneously (..) it will be necessary other factors”, Lieutenant-Colonel Nicolas Coste, on France Bleu Gard Lozère

A fire very violent which impressed him:No moment of panic, however, we found ourselves faced with extremely large, violent fronts of fire, which came at us (…) we had to speed up our technique to get out of this situation

The few hours he was able to rest were… in a church of a small village improvised as a dormitory.


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