Since the beginning of the summer, France has been burning everywhere. In Gironde, with 13,600 hectares of devastated forests in Landiras, 7,000 in the Dune du Pilat and 6,800 in Hostens. But also in Corsica, where a fire has reduced to ashes, for the time being, nearly 500 hectares in Santo-Pietro-di-Tenda. Not to mention Brittany, and the town of Brasparts, in Finistère, which is fighting a fire that has already covered 1,300 hectares.
The list is not exhaustive: that is to say the magnitude of the addition. And it is indeed a record of burnt surfaces which could be beaten in this year undermined by Drought. You have to look far back in the rear view mirror and go back to 1976 to get an idea of the ongoing disaster. 46 years ago, 88,000 hectares of forest burned down. On August 12, 2022, we are at 60,358 hectares, and the year is far from over. “To be precise, the figures from the European Union’s Copernicus program also take into account burning, that is to say agricultural burning directed by man”, specifies the National Forestry Office. Civil Security, through its spokesperson, Alexandre Jouassard, specified on August 9 on France Info that the total of forests ravaged by the flames reached 42,000 hectares.
But the most important thing remains the trend, which is not good. Given the frequency of heatwaves this summer, and the glaring lack of water that results, the records of 1976 and 2003, the second year most devastated by fires with 73,000 hectares burned, could easily be reached. This is the opinion of Alexandre Jouassard, who notes that the extreme climatic phenomena predicted by the IPCC and Météo France for the period 2030-2050 are already being observed.
More and more violent fires
Beyond the number of hectares burned, the European Information System on Forest Fires, EFFIS, informs that the number of fires is on the rise, with, to date, 265 outbreaks of fire recorded, against 214 over the whole of last year. The terrible year that had been 2019, with 304 fires) could therefore also be exceeded by 2022.
More numerous, the fires are also more violent. Between 2006 and 2021, notes EFFIS, 7,276 hectares were burned on average. Over the first eight months of 2022, the total therefore exceeds 60,000. In question, the four episodes of heat waves mixed with violent winds and the very regular sequence of fire starts throughout the territory. All the lights are red, and the ONF warns that this summer with an exceptional face could, unlike that of 1976, isolated in the 20th century, become a norm.