In 2022, gigantic forest fires marked the minds and wooded areas of France. With the approach of a new high-risk summer, the deputies are looking into a battery of measures on Monday to better prevent fires. A crucial debate as global warming dries out the soil and vegetation, increasing the risk of a fire.
The bill, already unanimously adopted at first reading by the Senate, will be debated from 4 p.m. until Wednesday in the Assembly. It passed without difficulty the course of the examination in committee, in a consensual climate, in spite of reservations from the left. After a trying summer of 2022 on the forest fire front in France, the Pyrénées-Orientales were already the scene in mid-April of the first big fire of this year in the country, with flames which covered around 1,000 hectares.
The forests of France increasingly exposed
Global warming, with the increase in severe droughts, “will globally increase by 50% the exposure of French forests to the risk of forest fires by 2050”, underlined in committee the Renaissance deputy Sophie Panonacle, one of the rapporteurs of text. Faced with the proliferation of “non-standard” fires, sometimes affecting areas hitherto spared, the bill initiated by LR and centrist senators lays the foundations for a “national strategy”, involving all the actors concerned and including the agricultural areas.
The text also wants to “better regulate the interfaces between forests” and urban areas and raise public awareness. Among the measures planned, the Senate has reinforced the legal obligations of clearing for owners of land near forests, with increased penalties in the event of breaches, further increased by the deputies in committee.
Butts monitored
Another provision conditions the sale of land on compliance with these obligations, of which buyers and tenants must be better informed. An authorization to use drones for the control of these clearings by the communities was added during the examination in committee by the deputies.
Faced with the many fires caused by cigarette butts, the text enshrines at the legislative level the prohibition of smoking in the woods or forests most exposed to the risk of fire, and up to 200 meters from these areas, during “periods at risk “. And the throwing of cigarette butts is explicitly included among the causes of involuntary fire punishable by law. An article enshrined in law the possibility for the prefect to prohibit certain agricultural work in the event of a high risk of fire, with compensation if necessary.
Ways to fight fire
In 2022, “72,000 hectares, including 60,000 hectares of forest, went up in smoke” in France, recalled the Minister for Ecological Transition Christophe Béchu at the end of April, announcing the dissemination from June by Météo-France of a new “Météo forests” to alert the population to the risk of fire.
The government also announced in April the strengthening of resources against fires, with nine additional water bomber planes and helicopters mobilized in 2023, bringing the number of aircraft from 38 to 47, as well as nearly 500 additional firefighters.