Gironde: firefighters’ tactics to fight extraordinary fires in the Landes forest

In Gironde, in the north of the Landes forest, the situation is getting tenser from hour to hour. Minute by minute, even. Of the “powerful and changing winds blow in gusts” on areas that have been on fire since last week. The Departmental Fire and Rescue Service of Gironde (Sdis 33) warns that from 3 p.m., the Landes forest could “become a powder keg”. The firefighters mobilized all the means at their disposal to try to contain the flames. Fire hoses, Canadairs, but also tactical fires, backfires and firewalls.

For almost an entire week now, major fires have been ravaging the Landes forest. In Gironde, we mourn some 14,000 hectares of wood burned. In the south of the department, near Landiras, nearly 10,000 hectares have already gone up in smoke. And on the coast, in the Teste-de-Buch sector, more than 4,000 hectares were reduced to ashes. With the temperatures continuing to rise, the drought increasing and the powerful and capricious winds blowing over the region, the situation remains critical on Monday 18 July. She even seems to want to degrade herself.

The director of the Departmental Fire and Rescue Service of Gironde (Sdis 33) mentioned this morning, during a press briefing, flames from “100 meters high”a situation “extreme and exceptional”, “a phenomenon we have never seen before” on a Forest fire. On the ground, firefighters report “bursting pines” under the effect of heat and which catapult their bark onto plots hitherto spared. The “swings of fire ” multiply.

In addition to firefighters who fight on the ground and aerial means, another technique had already been implemented to fight the fire. The backfire technique. It is an integral part of the tools available to firefighters to put out fires. It is regularly used in France. And served during mega-fires that ravaged Australia in 2019/2020.

How best to parry the fire?

The idea is to fight against fire… with fire! The fire that burns vegetation in a controlled manner. So that the flames find no more fuels to converse. Thus, when the fire and the backfire eventually meet, they mutually extinguish each other. But the technique remains risky. And difficult to implement in the conditions currently prevailing in the Landes forest. The wind and the absence of humidity making the operations delicate.

The other possibility is to resort to tactical burning. Ignite tactical fires along an area to channel the flank of a fire. Or in a defined plot, to remove vegetation there. The risk here is the same as with backlights. That is to say to start a new fire, precisely where we hoped to succeed in stopping the one in progress.

To avoid this, difficult decisions were made in Gironde. Clear cutting operations are now underway. In the Landes forest, both on the Landiras side and on the Teste-de-Buch side, trees are felled on so-called tactical plots of 15 kilometers. The wood is cleared. The residues are crushed. Objective, to leave no more matter to burn in the looming flames. By creating corridors without combustibles 800 meters wide. Hopefully as many natural firewalls.

On the Teste-de-Buch side more specifically, yet another tactic has just been put in place. The National Forestry Office has started bringing back tons of sand intended to stop the forest fire by forming another kind of natural barrier against the flames. Objective: to prevent the fire from finally reaching the town of Biscarosse and spreading to the Landes department.