If you live in Ile-de-France, you may smell a burning smell outside this Tuesday evening. “This smell certainly comes from the ongoing fires that are raging in France”, indicates the Paris police headquarters. “The reason? The versatility of the wind”explains the prefecture, which calls not to clutter the 18 and to contact it only “in case of proven fire”.
“The stream of smoke redirected”
According to the prefecture, we must therefore look at the side of the historic fires that affect the Gironde, 600 kilometers away. They are still not under control and have destroyed more than 20,000 hectares. The smoke and the smell were felt in Bordeaux, Nantes, Lot and Dordogne. Sébastien Léas from Météo France confirms with our colleagues from franceinfo: “these fumes escaped rather towards Gascony, but the arrival of much cooler air on the Atlantic facade redirected the flow and these fumes spread from the banks of the Garonne to Ile de France”
To read also: IN IMAGES – Fires in Gironde: look back on a week of fierce fighting against the flames
“It’s a fairly classic phenomenon”, explains Sébastien Léas. “We see this quite regularly, with the sand from the Sahara for example which reaches France. Or during the violent fires in Colorado, in the United States in 2021, which had brought fine particles to the other side of Atlantic”.
Many fires in Ile-de-France, but not all of them are the cause of the smell
The Air Quality Monitoring Association indicates that these odors come from Gironde but also from other fires in Ile-de-France. According to firefighters, however, this is not related to the underground cable fire which was triggered in a restaurant in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, causing an explosion. The smell is not the result of the fire in the Yvelines either, according to the prefecture. A fire hit the forest of Rochefort-en-Yvelines. He had destroyed 10 hectares of forest this Tuesday at 9:30 p.m. and mobilized dozens of machines and a helicopter for reconnaissance.
And the day was particularly hot in Seine-et-Marne. First in Bassevelle, in the northeast of the department. An agricultural machine caught fire and the flames destroyed nearly 2,000 square meters of fields. He was brought under control in the afternoon. A few kilometers to the south, a field of rapeseed has burned down. The firefighters quickly intervened. And finally, in Cerneux, 4 hectares of agricultural fields went up in smoke. The flames started to attack an undergrowth but they were quickly brought under control by the soldiers of the fire. We don’t know the reason for the fire.