Wildfire threatens Marseille as a thousand firefighters defend city

A thousand firefighters have been mobilized to fight a huge fire that reached the outer edge of Marseille, the second largest city in France.

“The marine firefighters battalion wags guerrilla warfare, hoses are at hand,” said Pino Bayan’s mayor, referring to the firefighting and rescue fire service in Marseille.

The Governor of Bouches-du-rhyône, Georges-François Leclerc, urged the locals to stay at home and the firefighters said “defending” the city.

He said that although the situation was not fixed, it was “under control.”

At least 400 people were evacuated from their homes, according to the French media. It is said that nine firefighters were injured.

Laichirk said that at least 20 buildings were wounded and hundreds of homes were rescued by firefighters.

At its peak, the fire spread at a rate of 1.2 km (0.7 miles) in the minute, according to the French broadcaster BFMTV. This was due to a unique mixture of wind storms, vegetable cover and sharp slopes.

French President Emmanuel Macron, who was on a government visit to the United Kingdom, expressed his support for firefighters and called on residents to follow safety instructions.

“Our ideas with the injured and all the population,” wrote on X.

Interior Minister Bruno Retario arrived in Marseille on Tuesday evening, where he met local officials.

Marseille Provence Airport partially reopened after its closure since midday. “He has never tested a situation of this size,” said the airport president, Julian Kovinier.

The residents were notified of staying inside, drivers and nearby doors, and maintaining the roads are clear to emergency services.

The fire, which erupted earlier on Tuesday, was said near Bens-Merrabo, north of Marseille, covered about 700 hectares (7 kilometers).

The local authorities said that the fire originated in a car in which it caught fire on the highway, and that it could continue to spread as strong winds are seized until the end of this evening.

“It is very great – until the end of the world,” Monic Pilad, a city resident, told Reuters. She said that many of her neighbors had already left.

Bayan asked the population to remain “very awake” and reduce their movements.

Footage posted on the Internet showed huge smoke columns over Marseille, where fire broke out in a mountainous area to the north.

Bouches-Du-Rhône has not registered one drop of rain since May 19, according to BFMTV.

Elsewhere in France, there are still other hashtag fires that started near Narbonne on Monday, and the winds of 60 km/h (40 miles per hour) are still. Local officials said about 2000 hectares had been burned.

Forest fires were also reported in other parts of Europe, including the Catalonia region in northeastern Spain, where more than 18,000 people were ordered to stay at home due to a fire in the eastern province of Tergarwah.

Emergency units were deployed along with 300 firefighters while the strong winds during the night had participated in the fire, which spread over nearly 3000 hectares (7,413 acres) of the ground.

Several other parts of Spain – which witnessed the most important June ever – were at a maximum alert of forest fires.

In Greece, about 41 fires erupted throughout the country on Monday. Among them, 34 were contained early while seven active remained on Monday evening, according to the firefighting service.

A large part of West and Southern Europe was exposed to a incendiary heat wave in the early summer, which sparked fires that witnessed thousands that were evacuated from their homes.