On holiday near wildfires - WTF to do?

[thetinsoldier]

We’re in Bordeaux, 40k from the fires. It’s really smoky, the sun is covered by smoke and it’s really quite scary. Have spoken to neighbours and they say the smoke is just being blown this way, we’re not in danger, but it’s horrible and scary.

What would you do??

The Landes Forest is man-made, not natural. Planted in the 1800s after they drained the swampy land that had lots of lakes.

Planting pines was a purely commercial decision.

Prioritising pines over deciduous woodland does little to sustain wildlife when everything burns to death.

This is the problem that people don't really get that fires are really unpredictable and change direction in an instant. It's really easy to look back with the benefit of hindsight

I lived about 40-50km from the enormous wildfire in the forests of central Sweden just over a decade ago (caused by industrial negligence) and you can plan and attempt to predict all you want but not everything is controllable

• Wind direction determines what effects individuals see - we spent 3 weeks in twilight as the wind direction put the smoke and ash over our house. Not fun in a 33C heatwave in a wooden house. People who were closer to the fire saw only blue sky.
• some results are just inexplicable - I know of a village with a row of 5 wooden houses - the middle house burned down but the others were fine.
• Originally the prognosis was that several very large lakes (around 4km across) could be used contain the fire - but the wind strengthened and the fire jumped the lakes
• firefighting is difficult in rural areas and often depends on volunteer firefighters where the nearest professional fire station can be 50 miles away so it can take time to get people in position and call in help from other towns, counties and the military.
• Where they were lucky is that the public pitched in - there is a tabloid journalist who lived in the area and recounted the fantastic response to animal rescue with people turning up with horse boxes to fetch animals, the UNESCO world heritage site under threat was rescued by locals and some contacts with private helicopters who dropped water - so while the lawn burned it didn't reach the historic buildings.
• accessibility was an issue in the thick forest. Roads melted, fire crews became cut off, parts of the fire were inaccessible - I remember the county to the north sending volunteer crews with fire engines crossing the river to the north, one at a time on a tiny rope ferry as it got them almost directly into the forest.
• The biggest error was that Sweden had decommissioned their fire fighting aircraft a few years before the fire (after a series of very wet summers where they sat in the hanger). Huge mistake! - Italy and France sent planes and the pilots were treated like national heroes and could have eaten their own weight in cakes that delivered by grateful locals. Sweden reversed the decision and several of their planes are currently in France.

The biggest takeaway is that this won't be over anytime soon as France is still in the acute phase. The Swedish fire in 2014

• 31 July - Started
• 11 August - Under control
• 11 September - Acute phase over - although damping down continued
• April 2015 - completely put out and damping down could cease - fire kept popping up again as it travelled underground in peaty subsoil and tree roots.
• after that a huge operation to rebuild roads, homes and fell damaged trees - some roads did not reopen for over 18 months

@Lunde this is such a helpful and insightful post, thank you. It's so easy to underestimate the difficulty and complexity of dealing with something like this and to apportion blame rather than appreciate how much effort and care - and resources and money - goes in to saving people, animals, property and environments.

She isn’t 🙄🙄🙄

It sounds bloody stressful op. I am so sorry this has happened to your family. I hope you can safely navigate your way home.

I note some arrests are now being made. What kind of person starts fires like this deliberately - just doesn’t bear thinking about!

Are you basing the 40k from OPs first post?

That was four days ago, might be better to spend 30 seconds reading her updates.

I am French. Macron's handling of environmental issues has been appalling. His govt has overseen cuts of 1000 forestry commission staff and refused to buy firefighting planes 2 years ago. Police have fired tear gas at firefighters protesting the cuts.

There have been laws put forward to include broadleaf woodland in les Landes and increase firebreaks. Voted by left-wing parties, rejected by the centrist-RW majority.

My back garden caught fire last year and I lost 52 large conifers. The sap in them was like fuel in a way other trees in the garden weren’t. I imagine pine trees are similar. And I agree that pine trees don’t support biodiversity in the same way a broadleaf woodland would. Even if they haven’t burnt down.

there is a new forest being planted near me and they are prioritising mixed broadleaf trees.

Il est petit Pétain..

June 4th

https://dehavilland.com/aircraft-sales/securite-civile-francaise-doubles-its-dhc-515-commitment-with-order-for-two-additional-aircraft/

One problem here is funnily enough there's a heck of a lot of demand for water bombers, various, and long waits for deliveries.

Still, I guess it's never too early to start chucking politics into the blame game......

Yes, that is after the planes were cut from the budget in 2022 despite wildfires being an obvious and serious threat. Not sure why you think the environment is not a political issue.

Sorry, typo, 2024

TBH I still think it's a bit early to be playing politics with this, but I know we're into Pre-Presidential territory so there's no time to lose.

If you want to highlight the cut two years back, I''d have thought if you'd wanted to be fair you would have also mentioned the recent DH order.

Also objectively some in the current administration deserve at least some credit for expediting use of the A400M in the water bomber role immediately post trials....doing that was actually pretty smart...

ctif.org/news/france-deploys-a400m-water-bomber-capable-several-canadairs-worth-water-one-drop

Too soon? Are you fucking kidding me? We should have started making it a priority fifty years ago.

I'm talking about politicising the current ongoing fires.

Given there's been no overall enquiry yet we have no idea whether for example a decision made about water bomber 2 years ago has any relevance at all to events of the last week.

Just waiting for the lightly taxed billionaires to put their hands in their pockets like they did for Notre Dame

i know. 90% of fires are started by humans. Bloody beggars belief. wtf are they THINKING?!

I hope it’s just kids, and not something pre sinister. The west is at war, and we can’t rule out a motive to harm France deliberately. We have seen deliberate sabotage dripping into our countries for some time now, nothing can be ruled out.

I sincerely hope they can get the fires under control, I can’t imagine how frightening this is for everyone that lives there. Reading the post above it does look very complex even in the months ahead.

Whoever did this should spend their lives behind bars, and never see daylight sgain.

The one near Harlech was started accidentally by a campfire. This last weekend the police and rangers had to extinguish eight BBQs and campfires in New borough where the forest is. The stupidity of people is beyond my ken.

The fire on our mountain, the peat is still burning below ground but the firebreaks put in did work. There's very few trees up there though.

I read in France that the farmers have done sterling work creating firebreaks which have helped tremendously.

What? Really? Well it's a relief in one way that it hasn't happened naturally (through climate change) but these people need to be away for life (literally life) for murder and the utter devastation they have caused to thousands (maybe millions!) of people 🤬

Fucksake of course it is climate change-related. I despair of people's inability to see the bigger political picture here.

Apparently, since 6 July 163 people have been arrested in France on suspicion of arson, 15 of those in relation to this current fire.

It is absolutely climate change related.
most fires are caused by human activity, intentional or accidental.
climate change has meant that the air is hotter, the soil and vegetation is much much drier, and winds are stronger.
so fires that would have been easily managed previously are now raging out of control- because of climate change.