Wildfire that reached Marseilles pushed back but not extinguished
Authorities said the fire was in ‘net regression’ on Wednesday morning after racing towards the historic Mediterranean port city on Tuesday.
A wildfire that reached France’s second-largest city and left 110 injured was pushed back overnight but had not yet been extinguished, the authorities said.
Meanwhile, Marseille’s mayor lifted a confinement order for tens of thousands of people.
Mayor Benoit Payan said the fire was in “net regression” on Wednesday morning after racing towards the historic Mediterranean port city on Tuesday, forcing hundreds of people to evacuate and the population of an entire city district to barricade themselves indoors on official orders.
Spurred on by hot summer winds, the fire grounded all flights to and from Marseille and halted train traffic in most of the surrounding area on Tuesday. Train, road and plane traffic remained complicated on Wednesday.
The mayor said 110 people had been treated for smoke inhalation and related injuries.
More than 1,000 firefighters were deployed to tackle the fire, which broke out near the town of Les Pennes-Mirabeau before racing towards Marseille. Some 720 hectares were hit by the blaze, the local authority said.
It described the fire as “particularly virulent”. It came on a cloudless, windy day after a lengthy heat wave around Europe left the area parched and at heightened risk for wildfires.
Several wildfires have broken out in southern France in recent days, including one in the Aude region that has burned some 2,000 hectares and continued to rage on Wednesday.
Light grey smoke gave the sky over Marseille’s old port a dusty aspect as water-dropping planes attempted to extinguish the fire on the outskirts of the city, which has some 900,000 inhabitants.
