“We were born here, so if we can lend a hand”, in Landiras, the inhabitants come to the aid of the firefighters

Fire trucks drive back and forth on a forest track in Landiras. All around, young pines are charred and trunks are still smoking. The professionals unroll the fire hoses. They are protected from toxic fumes by their hoods. “We treat the very small departures to avoid the burning of everything that is dry around us”explains a firefighter.

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Right next to it, three men, without equipment, simply dressed in shorts and t-shirts, and they too are spraying the smoke which escapes from the ground. “Seeing all this go up in smoke is a disaster”explains Thomas Géral, who has just emptied a water tank, thousands of liters stored in the back of his pick-up. “It’s all our vegetation, all our landscape… We were born here, so if we can lend a little helping hand. It’s not much but if everyone does it, we can move on anyway.”

The milestone of 20,000 hectares of burned forest was exceeded in Gironde on the evening of Tuesday July 19, a week after the start of the fires in La Teste-de-Buch in the Arcachon basin, and in Landiras, in the south of the department, not far from the Landes. More than 13,000 hectares went up in smoke in this area alone, and firefighters are having a hard time containing the progress of the fire. Despite the hundreds of reinforcements from all over France, the multiple fire starts and the different fronts of the fire are impossible to cover at the same time, so the inhabitants also get involved and will themselves help put out the fires. .

A few kilometers further, Claude Pommier finally returns home, after hours of fierce struggle aboard his pick-up. Usually, it’s for transporting the frame, but there “We will install two tanks, a pump, we will manage, we will help him.” For four days, with his son Jérémy, who is normally a plumber, they have been traveling the roads and forest tracks looking for the slightest smoke or the small flame to put out. “The first day, I stayed 35 hours up, I was rinsed”he says.

Despite the extreme fatigue, Jérémy returns there to finish the job that the firefighters, overworked, sometimes do not have time to complete: extinguish the last embers, once the fire is under control. “There are not enough volunteers, people behind, to waterhe explains. It takes a long time, It takes a lot of water.

“Last night at 11 o’clock, there was no one, no more firefighters, no more, and I had a little fire in the piles of wood. We went there otherwise the houses passed there.”

Firefighters even thanked Jeremy for his help. But beware of excessive courage and devotion. Jean-Michel, from the forestry group, had to admit defeat last night. “When it comes to you, it’s not even worth trying to intervene, you fold everything up and leave”, explains the firefighter. When leaving it, Jean-Michel looks at the sky, and its clouds of smoke which completely hide the sun. “If only it could rain, the ground and the air is desperately dry”, he tells us. This would help firefighters even more.