Landes: forest fire fixed, first evacuated residents return home

The fire which has ravaged 1,700 hectares in the heart of the Landes forest since Thursday, without victims or material damage, is “fixed” and half of the evacuees will be able to return home, the authorities announced Monday morning. Last night, “the situation evolved in a rather very favorable way. (...) the fire did not progress. (...) However, I repeat, fixed fire does not mean extinguished fire. So we obviously have to remain very vigilant,” the secretary general of the prefecture of this South-West department, Stéphanie Monteuil, told the press.

“The positive side of this fixed fire is that it will allow the return home of around 250 inhabitants” of Luglon, a village of 350 inhabitants where the fire started on Thursday. This return will take place from 10 a.m. “It’s okay, we can go home!”, congratulated Philippe Dassy, ​​a 67-year-old bus driver, to AFP, hanging up his phone after a call from his mayor announcing the good news.

Three days after being evacuated from Luglon, a village of 350 inhabitants, he is preparing to return there “without fear, thanks to the firefighters”, as soon as he has packed his bags in the holiday village in the neighboring town of Sabres, where he was “very well” received with his wife and two children.

“There is no building destroyed, no house destroyed”

“We're going to get through this!”, said to AFP Gérard Uriona, another resident of Luglon who is smiling again after several days of voluntarily fighting against the resurgence of the fire. On Sunday, around fifty people had already been able to return home to Garein, south of Luglon, out of the 650 evacuated in total, at the end of a day where the firefighters had carried out “ant work” on the ground to drown the edges of the fire, according to Commander Alexandre Bourmaud, head of sector.

“There are no buildings destroyed, no houses destroyed. But the landscapes have obviously been impacted. (...) Life will necessarily not be at all the same today as it was 5 days ago,” underlined the state representative. Around 350 firefighters, compared to 550 at the peak of the fire, will continue their work on Monday “to make positive progress in relation to the objective, obviously, of having the fire extinguished. But we are not there at all yet,” insisted Stéphanie Monteuil.

She replaced the prefect of Landes Gilles Clavreul, who is to meet Sébastien Lecornu in Gironde, as part of the launch of the reconstruction of areas affected by the fires in the region.

Record number of burned surfaces

The Prime Minister, booed on Monday upon his arrival at Porge, where he was to speak with the mayor of this town which was the most ravaged by the Gironde megafire at the end of July, is accompanied by six ministers and five members of the “reconstruction mission” led by the State. This is the third major fire this summer in the immense Landes de Gascogne massif, mainly planted with maritime pines dried out by heat waves favored by climate change, after those at the end of July in Biscarrosse (Landes, 3,700 hectares) and Saumos (Gironde, 42,000 hectares).