"The hope that this tragedy was not in vain": her husband died in the Tanneron fire 40 years ago, Catherine Carcenac-Roger testifies

For the young couple, life was taking flight. On July 31, 1985, Catherine was cuddling Sébastien, the little boy born six months earlier to her and Yves Roger. It had been a year since the couple had celebrated their wedding, "and Sébastien's baptism had taken place just a week before the fire," Catherine recalls with emotion.

"Yves wasn't supposed to go to the fire; he wasn't on call that day. But when he learned of the extent of the fire, he insisted on going to fight it; it was his vocation." A vocation the young man shares with Catherine's family. His three brothers are also firefighters, as is his father, who was then the fire station manager in Le Luc. "Sometimes all five of them would go to the same fire together. Luckily, that wasn't the case that day... After the fire, it was my father who had to identify what remained of the bodies of Yves and his three colleagues; this was only possible thanks to their jewelry... He never recovered from this ordeal; he was traumatized by it."

"It was my brother who came to tell me early in the morning."

During the night of July 31 to August 1, Catherine heard on the radio that the fire had been bad and that firefighters had died. "They didn't say who right away, the families hadn't been notified... It was my brother who came to tell me in the early morning. And then everything fell apart."

Yves Roger already had "some experience, he started very young, he had this passion... He wanted to protect the Var forest from fire. And his colleagues that day, in the truck, were like him."

"We were very well supported."

Like Yves, Catherine was then "barely 23 years old. We were just starting our lives..." She remembers "the immense emotion that touched the whole town, these four young men were all well known here, from well-established families, it was a tragedy for all of Le Luc."

For her, it's a personal drama. "Luckily I had to take care of Sébastien, who already looked a lot like his father, and I was well supported, especially by my family, otherwise, I don't know what I would have done..."

The young widow remembers outpourings of solidarity. "We were surrounded by the firefighters and the general public. It was heartwarming, and everyone wanted to do good, but at the same time, it always brought us back to the tragedy."

Catherine emphasizes that as an orphan of the firefighters, "Sébastien was never forgotten, he was always supported, he was able to go on vacation thanks to that, to camp, and even to Kourou! There was also an emergency fund, in case of financial difficulties. From that point of view, the support and solidarity were heartwarming."

"I've been telling myself for 40 years that it's fate."

On the other hand, "I keep telling myself that this tragedy was due to fate, but I can't help but feel a kind of anger," she says with dignity. "With the other families of the Lucois firefighters, we took legal action, not for revenge, but to get answers. Why were so many firefighters sent to this trail that hadn't been cleared, in a mimosa clump that everyone knows is highly flammable? What was the need, when there was nothing to defend there? What are a few hectares of mimosas worth, compared to human lives? To this day, I still don't understand. And we have to accept it: we will never really know what happened..."

Although at six months old, his son was of course too young to remember the tragedy, "we passed on this memory, this knowledge to him, he is the heir to it, and he also passes it on gently to his children. And Sébastien shares another passion of this father he barely knew: rugby. Yves's memory is well preserved..."

Catherine "always maintained good relations with the families of the three other firefighters from Luc who died that day... In particular with the widow of Serge Pothonier who found herself in the same situation as me, with a little boy of barely 4 years old."

"The hope that this tragedy was not in vain"

Despite the incomprehension that remains, "I still have one hope: that this tragedy was not in vain. That the lessons learned from it, about firefighters' equipment, about the methods and strategies deployed in the face of forest fires, about the importance of prevention and clearing, have since helped save other lives. Even if there will always be big fires, and fighting them will never be without risks."

She personally experienced it four years ago. Catherine, who moved from Le Luc to Gonfaron about fifteen years ago, is passionate about horse riding and participated in the spontaneous rescue operation for horses threatened by the Gonfaron fire in 2021, in the hamlet of Bertrands. "There were several of us, we rushed to the scene with our vans and trailers. The flames were running along the road; it was very impressive."

Forty years later, "life has gone on, of course, but the wound remains there, never disappears." Catherine Carcenac-Roger will take part, as always, on July 31, in the two ceremonies, at Luc and Tanneron. "They are beautiful ceremonies, but we would prefer never to have had to take part in them..."