"We Are Waiting For Rain, For Winter, For God" - Fighting A Megafire In Southern France
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Hervé Trentin wept as he described watching his home region on fire. "It is heartbreaking to watch it burn." he said
Trentin has a three-year-old daughter, and when he thinks about the future of the forest he thinks about her too. "I wonder what will happen," he said, looking up towards the tops of the trees and beyond to the sky. "I don't want to say our future looks like what we are living this summer, but... you know."
The people of Gironde had barely had time to catch their breath since the last megafire, in July, which burned about 14,000 hectares in the same area. That blaze had appeared to be under control, but the heat was still in the earth - a so-called "zombie fire" that will re-emerge in persistent dry conditions and accelerates new fires. Trentin worked the July fire too, up to 48 hours straight among the flames. "I had never seen such a huge fire," he said. "I remember the big fires in 91 and 97 but they didn't spread that fast." Somehow the new fire was worse. The vegetation was drier than ever. "Even the hardwoods burn like straw," Trentin said. "Usually we use the hardwoods to help us against the fire."
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A tactical fire burns a patch of land next to a family home. The work has to be precise to avoid setting new wildfires
There are more than 1,000 French firefighters now in Gironde battling this blaze, assisted by colleagues from various European nations. Not all of them share Trentin's years of experience, and for some it is their first time facing a megafire that can move faster than you. When the new fire was at its peak in the middle of last week, Trentin and his colleague Christophe Dubois were working in the forest when they saw a fireball flying towards them. "It's like a wave coming over you, you cannot outrun it," Dubois said. "You have to drop and lie flat on the ground." But four younger colleagues from Toulouse froze, bolt upright. Dubois and a colleague scrambled to spray them with water and pull them down, but mere seconds were too long, and two were injured with second degree burns on the legs and face.
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Firefighters plan over a map on Saturday, near the edge of the wildfires in Gironde
"I have been a firefighter for 40 years and I had never seen such a fire," said Jean-Pierre Le Cunff, tactical fire chief for the Haute-Garonne region, who has two sons in the force. "We are waiting for rain, for snow, for winter, for God," he said. There was no disagreement that the climate was changing for the worse. "We talk about global warming of course," Le Cunff said. "We see it, we feel it. This year, it is striking. In the mountains there is no glacier any more, everything is dry, the herds have nothing to eat."
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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62539385