Real carnage. Although Storm Ciaran fortunately did not cause any casualties in Brittany, the violent gusts did not spare the vegetation, with tens of thousands of trees bending under the force of the wind. A real spectacle of desolation but also a headache for many mayors who wondered what they could do with all this dead wood.
In Morbihan and Finistère, some of these trees uprooted by the storm during the night of November 1st to 2nd will be used to heat homes. This is the case in the towns of Lorient and Quimperlé where the local public company Bois Énergie Renouvelable is responsible for recovering this wood damaged by the storm. “We are trying to limit the damage and promote what can be,” underlines Olivier Pernot, operations agent at the SPL.
Trees crushed and transformed into small chips
The project is not an easy task with more than 200 tonnes of branches and trunks which are stored in the thirty or so shareholder municipalities of the local public company. In Quéven near Lorient, the wooden platform has already received sixty tonnes. On site, the broken trees are crushed to be transformed into small chips of a few centimeters.
Once dried, a step which can take between three and six months, this fuel will be used to power eight wood boiler rooms in the surrounding area. And therefore to heat residents connected to these heat networks next winter.