Posted Jul 23, 2022, 12:00 PM
20,800 hectares gone up in smoke in Landiras and Teste-de-Buch, in Gironde; more than 1,600 hectares calcined on the Montagnette massif, south of Avignon; several hundred hectares of moorland disappeared in the Monts d’Arrée, according to the prefecture of Finistère… Since mid-July, France has been grappling with several huge forest fires. Exceptional events that point, in hollow, the shortcomings of the national strategy established at the turn of the 1950s.
However, the country is far from lacking in this area. Since the “fire of the century”, which in 1949 ravaged half of the Landes de Gascogne massif (more than 50,000 hectares) and caused the death of 82 people, France has gradually equipped itself with prevention and of intervention, which have made it possible to drastically reduce the areas burned on average each year.
In Gironde, 20 fire starts every day
But global warming is changing the situation: in total, some 40,000 hectares have already burned in France since the start of the year, compared to just over 30,000 for the whole of 2021, according to the European Fire Information System. forest (EFFIS). “The fires are gigantic and the weather conditions are no longer the same as before” with the heat waves hitting western Europe, abounds Bruno Lafon, president of the organization for the Defense of forests against fire (DFCI) of Aquitaine.
Founded after the forest fires of 1949, the association collects from forest owners, private or public, a tax in order to provide firefighters with easier access to fires and water points. 42,000 kilometers of trails and 5,000 water points crisscross the triangle that connects the Pointe de Grave to Bayonne and Agen; watchtowers are installed, and 2,500 volunteers patrol with the assistance of the ONF and firefighters. Enough to extinguish “99.9% of fire starts and, at the moment, it’s 20 per day”, assures Bruno Lafon.
“Everyone finances according to their means”
But not all forests are equally equipped. “The DFCI is not a mandatory skill for anyone, it can belong to anyone. Everyone finances according to their means and sensitivity,” says Michel Maufroy, project manager at the Delegation for the Protection of the Mediterranean Forest (DPFM).
If the public delegation, created after the dramatic fires of the summer of 1986, is co-financed to the tune of 11.5 million euros per year by the State and the local authorities, this is far from being the case in regions less endowed or hitherto relatively spared, such as Brittany. Especially since the DFCI is not binding and the fragmentation of the French forest – 3.5 million owners share 75% of the surface – does not help.
Another problem: demographic dynamics, more and more people living on the edge of the forest. The legal clearing obligations (OLD), which oblige the owners of land located less than 200 meters from woods and forests to eliminate combustibles to a depth of 50 meters around the dwelling, are notoriously not respected. However, it is the protection of property and people that firefighters focus on, sometimes at the risk of dispersing and letting the blaze burn elsewhere.
“To put everything back together”
“We understand that, but we can’t let the forest burn for equipment that has not complied with the obligations! exclaims Stéphane Viéban, managing director of Alliance Forêts Bois, a forestry cooperative whose members own half of the hectares that have gone up in smoke in Landiras.
For Antoine d’Amécourt, president of the Federation of Private Forestry Unions, Fransylva, it is even necessary to “reset everything flat”: the rules of town planning, the articles of the environmental code which intersect with the practices of forest maintenance, late mowing along the road…
Last avenues, among the highest priorities: prevention with the general public – around 90% of fire starts are of human origin – and increasing the means of intervention. On the move on Wednesday in the Arcachon basin, Emmanuel Macron acknowledged that the 22 planes with which civil protection is equipped are in insufficient number.
