The Var is in turn ravaged by flames. “More than 4,000 hectares” of forest and scrubland were “traversed” Monday in the Massif des Maures, north-east of Toulon, by a violent fire, according to firefighters on the ground. However, “it is still too early to assess the surface actually burned,” said Commander Delphine Vienco, firefighters of the Var, Monday evening.
Referring to “a virulent fire”, the prefecture of Var had spoken of “several hundred hectares covered” in a press release earlier in the evening. But, there had been no evacuation at this stage, according to a source at the prefecture. The flames traveled some 12 kilometers according to a last tweet from the firefighters. Four departmental roads were closed Monday evening, in the direction of La Garde-Freinet and Grimaud in particular.
Reinforcements this Tuesday
Faced with this disaster, triggered around 5:45 p.m. at the Sigues motorway area on the A57, around one hundred kilometers north-east of Toulon, 430 firefighters have already been mobilized on Monday, assisted by seven Canadairs, two Dash, three water bomber helicopters and the Civil Security Dragon 83. According to the Var Prefecture, a column of 240 other firefighters should join them this Tuesday, from the Gard, the Alpes-Maritimes, the Alpes de Haute-Provence and the Bouches-du-Rhône. A departmental operational center was activated in the early evening Monday by the Prefecture.
Still fueled by a violent mistral at nightfall, when planes and helicopters had to stop their rotations, this fire is one of the largest to have hit the region this summer and could prove to be as destructive as the one that touched the mountain of Alaric in the Aude at the end of July. The biggest fire of the summer in France, it had devastated some 850 hectares in total according to the latest report.
The fire fixed at the gates of Marseille
The mistral which arrived in Provence on Monday fed several other fires during the day, at the gates of Marseille in particular, at the entrance to the Calanques National Park, or in the Var again, towards the Giens peninsula. However, these two fires were fixed. Preventively, all of the 25 forest massifs of Bouches-du-Rhône are prohibited from access this Tuesday, as well as the massifs of the Monts Toulonnais in the Var.