Fresh fires broke out in southeastern France today, with 2,000 hectares reduced to ash in the department of Gars where a firefighter was seriously injured and near Marseille, causing partial highway closures due to smoke.
South of Nîmes, a fire destroyed 2,000 hectares of pine forest, causing a large plume of smoke that caused the partial closure of the A9 motorway, which serves Spain.
The road reopened at 7:30 p.m. local time, highways company Vinci announced.
With the strengthening of northwest and north winds, whose gusts reach 60 km per hour on land, the fire was developing from 2.5 to 3 km per hour by late afternoon.
Four firefighters were injured, one of them seriously and is being treated for burns, according to Colonel Agrinier, who is coordinating operations on the ground.
Five planes and a firefighting helicopter are involved in the operations. Reinforcements with firefighters from neighboring counties are also expected to help the 170 firefighters who are already fighting the fire.
At a distance of 20 km from Marseille, France’s second largest city, a fire that broke out late in the afternoon crossed an area of 350 hectares, according to the local Fire and Rescue Service (Sdis).
France is in for another heat wave, with 35 to 39 degrees Celsius expected on Monday in the south of the country.
The heat is expected to peak on Wednesday with highs reaching or often above 35C, and temperatures reaching 39 or 40C in the south-west.
Western Europe experienced a heat wave in mid-July, the second in just a month, during which devastating forest fires broke out, including in the Gironde in southwestern France, where nearly 210,000 hectares were destroyed.
The Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region in the southeast experienced its warmest July since 1947, according to France’s meteorological service.
Source: RES-MPE
Source: Capital
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