France is encountering big fires in different areas this summer. A not common situation.
George Clooney, his wife and kids, had to be evacuated from a residence in the Var region.
@HungryHalibut is or should be next on holidays near Aix en Provence, not far from there.
Yes, 100 miles from Bordeaux but have had a couple of mornings waking up to an orange mist and sky from the fallout from the wind. The ground is parched and crisp, trees are dying and many won’t recover. Local farmers will not have feed for their stock and will have a poor year It is already a disaster without the fires and their additional toll on people. Very sad and with so much of France being rural and poor, subsistence farmers are going to suffer.
It’s very kind of you to think of me. Aix was last year, this year it’s a week near Espelette and then a few days in Montauban, but not until September. These fires are simply dreadful, but will the powers that be wake up? Probably not.
Yes, a disaster. They were already suffering, but now the situation reached a kind of paroxysm.
I don’t want to imagine what will be next.
Disposable barbecues, cigarettes and glass are the common causes of wildfires starting.
but not for the rapid spread. This is exceptional.
And it’s just the beginning.
I feel for the local people affected - it is hard to imagine what it is like having to evacuate, let alone losing your house. I hope everywhere gets some rain - but not extreme levels - before too long, though the weather forecasts are not optimistic. Unfortunately the “powers that be” who need to recognise and act to help prevent this sort of thing and worse are elsewhere and personally unaffected, so things are unlikely to improve.
I will be in France around the end of summer, as I usually am. Whilst I will avoid any risky areas I expect to pass close to some where there has been devastation, and I hope my small contribution to the local economy through buying wine to take home as well as food will help a little.
We have a removal lorry going down to Spain from England leaving Monday 10th August so hopefully things have improved by then, originally we where going to self drive but where down in Spain last month when fires broke out in Almeria and decided that professionals with proper insurance who are driving directly to us was better.
My brother has a house in Almeria just 10 miles from where the fires started last month the heart braking stories are just awful almost unimaginable that these fires can be started by the carelessness of people.
The Gironde wildfire is a true disaster. More than 200,000 people evacuated from their homes and about 250 properties completely destroyed. Although some communes are now authorised for people to return home, for some, especially in Le Porge, it will take much longer. Apart from all the obvious things, the level of Carbon Monoxide in the village exceeds the safe level unpredictably. You can see the affected in Google maps if you go to the area west of Bordeaux and tap on the Gironde Wildfire icon.
My wife and I know the Gironde region quite well and it is heartbreaking to read what is happening, as it happens. Often we have been in that region at this exact time, but as it happens, not this year. Much of the information on the official sites is in French of course, but you pick up quickly the language of the disaster. Wish all the many people involved well.
Exactly
Martin
And pyromaniacs too.
Ah good so, because Montauban seems to not be safe actually.
One quite interesting resource for information about the Gironde Wildfire is that some enterprising person has put a software application on GitHub which gives the readout on temperature hot spots from a whole load of different Earth observation satellites. If you click on the link below (it’s not commercial so hopefully @Richard.Dane will allow it) and it will load with the few spots still or recently hot. You have to give it time to read the data. Then if you tap the play button in the bottom left corner of the screen, you can see what happened over the last week or so. The earlier astonishingly fast growth was before this application was recording the data, but it’s still very interesting and indeed scary. Also if you then tap pause, and tap on any hotspot, it will tell you the megawatts of power the satellite was identifying at that spot. I have seen 50 Mw often, which is really astonishing and explains why these fires are so destructive and hard to control. For those unfamiliar with the area, the Atlantic coast is on the left and it’s about 60 km or so from the centre of Bordeaux on the right side of the map, to the Atlantic coast on the left.
Never mind the celebs or George Clooney.
Worry about the wildlife.
My mother lives in Beziers, a long way from Bordeaux, yet they can see the smoke haze in the very distance travelling west and taste it in the air.
A smiley and that picture? Not very appropriate.
I feel for the people and also the animals. I can’t begin to imagine what it must be like to loose your house, animals or crop. It is a very sad situation. I hope that European countries will stick together and come up with a plan to fight these fires together. It is very difficult for a country on it’s own.
We have been chatting daily to an elderly British couple who are parked in their Spanish registered motorhome along side the bay.
They were visiting a daughter in U.K. but have learnt their village has been ravaged by fire and are now homeless.
They are trying to build up their courage to return home.
.
It was a reply to Frenchrooster. He seems to have enjoyed the joke, as he’s given it a like.
George Clooney is a sympathetic guy. He lives in France since several years and became French.
So you don’t bother about George, neither me, as you post me roasting.
