BORDEAUX. Giants Firewhich erupted in July, only to subside and flare up again at noon on Tuesday, burned 69,000 hectares of pine and plane tree forest in the Gironde department, of which the city of Bordeaux is the capital, by yesterday afternoon.

In the community of Austen, very close to the front of the fire, Prime Minister Elisabeth Bourne and Minister of the Interior Gerald Darmanen set out yesterday to “greet the fight of the firefighters”. For his part, President Emmanuel Macron yesterday morning praised the contribution of five European countries (Greece, Germany, Poland, Austria and Romania) that provided equipment or even personnel to extinguish the fire. Athens sent two Canadair CL-415 firefighting aircraft to participate in aerial firefighting efforts. “European solidarity in action!” President Macron tweeted yesterday on the occasion of the arrival of the first Greek fire plane.

Mechanism activation

In a tweet yesterday, the European Commission said that France had activated the EU’s civil protection mechanism. to fight forest fires by providing the French fire service with four additional firefighting aircraft, as well as a team of specialist forest firefighters from Denmark.

Assistance to France from five European countries, with Greece sending two Canadair aircraft.

The Prefecture of the Gironde said yesterday that more than 1,100 firefighters have been sent to the front lines of the blaze, and services are eagerly awaiting more reinforcements. In addition to Canadair aircraft, firefighting helicopters and small Dash-type aircraft are involved in firefighting. High temperatures and strong hot winds blowing in the area make it difficult for firefighters to work.

By noon yesterday, more than 10,000 residents of the area had fled their homes and the front of the fire had shifted south, forcing authorities to close traffic in both directions on the busy A63 motorway, which connects the French Basque Country and the Pyrenees with Bordeaux, on the Atlantic coast. According to yesterday’s statements by the Minister of the Interior, “there are reasonable suspicions that the fires in Latiras were the work of arsonists, judging by the dispersion of the fires and the fact that the ignition occurred at night.”

According to ESA satellites, more than 500,000 hectares of forest have burned down in France since the beginning of the year. The constant drought affecting the European continent causes forest fires and leads to a reduction in the harvest of corn, among other crops, by 15%. In France, hundreds of small communities are now being supplied with water by tanker trucks as springs dry up and reservoirs empty.