Fire in Martigues: the fire has been contained after covering around 250 hectares, 300 firefighters remain mobilized

After 24 hours of fighting, firefighters said the blaze that has devoured nearly 250 hectares of pine forest since Thursday, July 17, in Martigues, northwest of Marseille, is now "contained," but 300 firefighters remain mobilized to extinguish the last embers.

By early Friday afternoon , a reactivation of the fire had claimed eight more hectares, bringing the total area affected to 248 hectares since the start of the fire at 7 p.m. on Thursday. Following this setback, the fire was finally contained on Friday evening, the Bouches-du-Rhône prefecture announced in its ninth situation report.

Although air resources were withdrawn with the arrival of nightfall, 300 firefighters and five police and gendarmerie patrols will remain at work overnight, for the "protection of the population" and the flooding of the affected areas, with weather conditions deemed favorable.

The fire, the cause of which remains unknown, mobilized up to 1,000 firefighters and up to nine aircraft (seven Canadairs and two Dashes) and two water-bombing helicopters on Thursday. "Never before has a fire mobilized so many resources" this year in the department, emphasized Bruno Cassette, the sub-prefect of the Aix-en-Provence district.

The population had also been confined until Friday morning in two hamlets in the commune.

As things began to return to normal on Friday, Martigues town hall used social media to search for food trucks that had spontaneously turned up on Thursday to supply the relief efforts, which had arrived en masse from several departments.

In terms of human toll, there were still no casualties among the population as of Friday evening, the only three slightly injured being firefighters.

As for the material toll, it is "very reassuring," insisted the sub-prefect on Friday morning, "only one outbuilding of a house was damaged, as well as a farm," while 120 homes in total were "threatened."

This fire, however, rekindled bad memories in a highly exposed region. On Thursday, the Bouches-du-Rhône region was once again on red alert for forest fires.

"We are reliving the ordeal of August 4, 2020," lamented one resident, Sophie, on the town hall's Facebook page.

On this day five years ago, the town of Martigues was hit by a violent fire that swept through 1,000 hectares and completely destroyed two holiday villages. Evacuations were then carried out by sea.

This new fire is the second major one in a few days around Marseille, after the fire of July 8 , which started from a burning car on the side of the highway, and covered 750 hectares between Pennes-Mirabeau and Marseille. It affected 91 buildings, 60 of which were destroyed or are now uninhabitable, mainly in the Marseille district of L'Estaque.

Arriving on the scene that same day, Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau warned that , in the face of these very early fires, we were heading "towards a high-risk summer." Under the influence of climate change, these extreme weather events are expected to increase in frequency, scientists warn.

And in addition to the Martigues fire, around twenty other fires were reported on Friday in Bouches-du-Rhône, including one in Bouc-Bel-Air where a fire covered 1.5 hectares of fields.

In the neighboring Var department, a fire started Thursday following a problem with a heavy goods vehicle burned 30 hectares in Fréjus . It was under control by Friday, but 130 firefighters will remain on duty overnight from Friday to Saturday to deal with flooding.

At the other end of France, in Brittany , the fire in the Brocéliande forest in Paimpont (Ille-et-Vilaine), which started on Thursday afternoon, was declared under control early Friday morning by the fire brigade.

The fire, also of undetermined origin, burned 120 hectares of vegetation and 390 firefighters and 130 vehicles were mobilized on the ground, supported by several water bomber planes (two Air Tractors and a Dash).

"In Brocéliande, Martigues, Fréjus, wherever fires are currently raging, our firefighters are fighting," praised President Emmanuel Macron on X: "They are protecting lives, our forests, our heritage. I express our gratitude and support to them."