Faced with the criticisms and anger of Marseillais disaster victims by the fire of July 8, the prefect of Bouches-du-Rhône published in the night of Wednesday to Thursday an unusual development where he “assumes all of the decisions” taken.
Georges-François Leclerc “wishes to react to these implications, which do not reflect the reality of the effective and heroic commitment of our fire and rescue forces. He assumes all of the decisions that have been made in order to guarantee and above all succeed in protecting the population,” wrote the prefecture in a press release.
This violent fire had left on Tuesday July 8 in the middle of the morning of a car that caught fire on the edge of the Pennes-Mirabeau motorway. Faced with a violent and swirling wind, the fire had then quickly jumped from one hill to another, on vegetation dried up by several days of heat wave, to arrive in the 16th arrondissement of Marseille, in the northern districts.
In the end, he traveled 750 hectares and if there was “no human loss” or “no serious injuries” as the prefect points out, the assessment is still heavy on the side of the victims with 91 affected buildings including 60 destroyed or made uninhabitable. But he insists: “almost a thousand homes could have been saved from the flames”.
Tuesday evening, during a meeting where the press was not invited, organized by the town hall of Marseille in the Estaque district, the anger of the victims spoke, several participants brought to AFP.
“The operational framework was very constrained”, today justifies the prefect, with other fires that day in the south of France and in particular that of Narbonne which in the end went 2,100 hectares in the Aude.
At 12:27 pm, the prefect had taken over the rescue management “because this fire was singular by his violence and because it was now two municipalities,” said the prefecture in his communication on Wednesday evening.
“It is the first time in the history of fires in Marseille that a prefect has taken command,” said Samia Ghali, deputy mayor of the city, with AFP.
“The anger of the victims is legitimate, it is a question of trying to understand why they were told to remain confined when there is fire in front of their door” and why the inhabitants see arriving from firefighters of the Alpes-Maritimes, who do not know these steep districts like the firefighters of Marseille, she explains to AFP.
In total, 875 firefighters from Bouches-du-Rhône and firefighters from Marseille had been deployed, reinforced by 500 firefighters from other departments, supported by 260 vehicles and 17 airlines.
Posted on July 17 at 12:42 p.m. AFP
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