SAINT-LAURENT-DE-LA-CABRERISSE, France: France’s biggest wildfire in decades will burn for several more days even though it has been brought under control, authorities said Friday as hundreds of firefighters kept up a battle against the flames.
The giant blaze in the southern department of Aude has burned through more than 17,000 hectares of land — an area bigger than Paris, killing one person, injuring 13 and destroying dozens of homes.
About 2,000 firefighters are still on duty around the blaze which was declared under control on Thursday night.
The fire will not be “declared extinguished for several days,” said Christian Pouget, the prefect for Aude. “There is still a lot of work to be done.”
Authorities have banned access to the forests that were devastated by the fire until at least Sunday.
They said that roads in the zone were too dangerous because of fallen electricity lines and other hazards.
Pouget said that about 2,000 people forced to flee the flames had still not been allowed back to their homes.
Hundreds of people are sleeping in school gyms and village halls across the region.
The fire is the biggest in France’s Mediterranean region for at least 50 years, according to government monitors. The southern region suffers more than others from wildfires.
At its most intense, the flames were going through around 1,000 hectares of land per hour, according to authorities in the nearby city of Narbonne.
Two days of strong and changing winds made the blaze difficult to predict.
A 65-year-old woman, who had refused to evacuate, was found dead in her scorched house, while 13 people were injured, 11 of them firefighters.
The wildfire is a “catastrophe on an unprecedented scale,” Prime Minister Francois Bayrou said Wednesday during a visit to the affected region.
“What is happening today is linked to global warming and linked to drought,” Bayrou said.
Environment minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher wrote on X Thursday that the fire was the largest in France since 1949.
The country has already seen around 9,000 wildfires this summer, mainly close to its Mediterranean coast.
The Aude department in particular has recorded an increase in areas burned in recent years, aggravated by low rainfall and the uprooting of vineyards, which used to help slow down the advance of fires.
In Saint-Laurent-de-la-Cabrerisse, the village hardest hit by the fire, thick smoke rose Thursday from the pine hills overlooking the vineyards where dry grass was still burning.
With Europe facing new August heatwaves, many areas are on alert for wildfires. Portugal on Thursday extended emergency measures because of the heightened risk of fires.
Near the Spanish town of Tarifa, fire crews secured areas near hotels and other tourist accommodations after controlling a major blaze that also destroyed hundreds of hectares.
Antonio Sanz, interior minister for Andalusia’s regional government, said on X that “the return of all evacuated people” had been authorized after the fire was “stabilized.”
Spanish broadcaster TVE reported that the fire started in a camper van at a beach campsite, and spread quickly in strong winds.
About 1,550 people and 5,500 vehicles were evacuated from camps, hotels and homes, Sanz said.
Spain is experiencing a heatwave with temperatures nearing 40C in many regions, and officials reported 1,060 excess deaths in July that could be attributed to intense heat.
Climate experts say that global warming is driving longer, more intense and more frequent heatwaves around the world, making for more favorable forest fire conditions.
