Hundreds of firefighters were battling an escalating forest blaze fuelled by fierce winds in the Cévennes region of southern France on Thursday.
Around 100 people in the Bordezac area have already been forced to leave their homes, the prefecture in Nîmes announced on Thursday night. Other nearby residents were asked to remain inside their homes for their own safety.
Around 600 hectares of woodland have already been consumed by the flames, and 10 water planes were deployed to assist firefighting efforts. The number of firefighters mobilised was set to be increased to 950 on Friday, and the number of fire engines to 140.
Firefighters were also tackling woodland blazes in several other parts of the south of France following a prolonged drought in the region.
On the outskirts of Arles, eight residential buildings and several small businesses were destroyed by the flames, according to La Provence, a local newspaper. The paper added that the fire was fanned by the so-called Mistral wind. To fight the blaze, 120 firefighters, firefighting aircraft and a helicopter were deployed.
"This is a wind that has the characteristic of drying out the vegetation and making it more susceptible to fire and favouring its spread," David Gaidet, the head of the local fire services told the newspaper.
He said that due to the drought the local landscape was already as parched by the beginning of July as it usually is by the beginning of August.
Extreme caution should be exercised, Gaidet stressed, noting that nine out of ten forest fires were caused by human negligence, usually by discarded cigarette butts or from makeshift fires. Access to most forest areas in the mountains has now been banned.
