Aude: One seriously injured in a violent fire, more than 11,000 hectares covered
The fire is spreading rapidly. In a tweet, Emmanuel Macron sent a message of support to the firefighters and victims. "All the nation's resources are being mobilized," he assured, calling for "the greatest caution."
A fire that broke out with exceptional intensity in the Corbières massif, in the Aude, left two people injured on Tuesday, one seriously, according to the prefecture, and ravaged nearly 11,000 hectares of vegetation in a few hours. One person is "in absolute emergency, seriously burned," the prefecture said Tuesday evening. The flames, fanned by the wind, spread from forests to scrubland, before reaching the village of Saint-Laurent-de-la-Cabrerisse, near Carcassonne, where houses were burned.
Holidaymakers at the Lagrasse and Fabrezan campsites were evacuated as a precaution, as were around thirty houses in Tournissan, another village in the area, where at least one house had partially caught fire, as well as several gardens, where residents were trying to stop the advance of the flames using garden hoses, an AFP photographer noted. In a tweet, President Emmanuel Macron sent a message of support to the firefighters and the victims. "All the nation's resources are mobilized," he assured, calling for "the greatest caution."
Skip the ad"The fire is spreading very quickly because the weather conditions are unfavorable, it's one of the driest areas in the department and the wind is strong," Lucie Roesch, secretary general of the Aude prefecture, told AFP. "On the ground," she added , "the system continues to increase in strength. Regarding air resources, we are at the maximum national capacity, nine Canadair and five Dash, 980 firefighters on site and 130 as reinforcements. This is a disaster of great magnitude. It's going to be a long night." Water-bombing helicopters are multiplying rotations to prevent the flames from reaching homes in the villages of Lagrasse, Fabrezan, Tournissan, Coustouge, Saint-Laurent-de-la-Cabrerisse, sometimes in vain.
Many departmental roads are closed to traffic to facilitate the work of firefighters. "The evolution of the fire is unfavorable. People are asked to remain confined inside their homes unless ordered to evacuate by the firefighters," insists the prefecture in a press release. The prefect of Aude called for caution and to obtain information via official sources, without relaying "false information."
The Aude department was placed on red alert for forest fires on Tuesday, with a "very high" risk of fire, as a heatwave sets in across southwest France, according to Météo-France. Since the beginning of summer, several fires have broken out in the Aude department, a department hit by drought and extreme heat. One of them, at the beginning of July, the largest in the department since 1986, covered 2,000 hectares and mobilized nearly 1,000 firefighters near Narbonne.
Affected by drought and the uprooting of vines, which acted as firebreaks and slowed the spread of flames, the Aude region has seen a sharp increase in the number of areas burned in recent years. "We were at 300-400 hectares per year at the beginning of the 2000s," Jean-Paul Baylac, in charge of forest fires at the Aude Departmental Fire and Rescue Service, reminded AFP last week. "The wind should weaken during the night," Lucie Roesch noted, hoping that the reduced intensity of the tramontane wind, which blows from the northwest, will stop fanning the flames.
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