A fast-moving fire at the gates of the French city of Marseille forced hundreds of people to evacuate their homes yesterday.
The fire, boosted by a long period of heatwave and a violent mistral wind, has diminished in intensity, the prefecture said on Wednesday morning. While the fire is still not contained, it is in “very clear regression”, according to the prefecture.
“The edges are still active and not stabilised”, a prefecture spokeswoman told AFP. It is therefore “still too early for evacuees” from Marseille's 16th arrondissement, hit by flames on Tuesday afternoon, to “return to their homes”.
In Les Pennes-Mirabeau, a neighbouring commune to the north-west of Marseille, where the fire started late Tuesday morning after a vehicle fire, the fire has restarted”, said the Préfecture de région, without giving further details.
A total of 400 people were evacuated, including 71 residents of a care home in Les Pennes-Mirabeau. 63 houses were damaged and a dozen were virtually destroyed. Around a hundred people were slightly injured, including firefighters and police officers.
In the space of a few hours, the fire had covered 700 hectares between Les Pennes-Mirabeau and Marseille, leading to the closure of Aix-Marseille Provence airport by midday.
A partial resumption of traffic started at around 9.30pm on Tuesday evening, but it could be closed again on Wednesday, to prioritise aerial fire-fighting resources, warned the prefecture.
High-speed train traffic in Marseille is due to return to normal service on Wednesday morning after a fire-related interruption, while local train traffic remains severely disrupted, SNCF announced.
According to Atmo-Sud, the plume of smoke in Marseille produced a concentration of fine particles ten times higher than the norm, and stretched out to sea for around a hundred kilometres, according to satellite images.
At the other end of the Mediterranean coast, near Narbonne, more than a thousand firefighters from all over France are continuing to battle a blaze that has burned 2,000 hectares of forest since Monday in the Aude department. The department has been hit by three forest fires in one week.
