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WILDFIRES

Forest fire of 2022 still burning in south-west France

A wildfire that began in 2022 in south-west France and destroyed hundreds of hectares of woodland is still burning underground.

Published: 4 December 2023 13:12 CET
Forest fire of 2022 still burning in south-west France
Smoke rises from the ground near Hostens in south-west France, as an underground fire continues to spread in March 2023. A member of the French National Forests Office (or ONF) looks on. (Photo by Philippe LOPEZ / AFP)

Large portions of the Hostens forest, located south of Bordeaux in Gironde, have been ablaze for almost a year and a half, albeit underground, and remain closed to the public.

The sediment in the area has allowed for the fire to continue to burn across approximately 20 hectares, raising fears that a new drought could lead to another above-ground wildfire.

“We are constantly on guard”, Pascale Got, who handles environmental issues for the Gironde département, told BFMTV.

“When vegetation starts to grow again, we cut it down. Given the amount that we have cut down so far, I don’t think there will be a resumption of wildfires, unless there is an exceptional drought.

Local authorities have also kept these areas of the forest closed off, in an effort to protect hikers. The hot underground represents a danger, as people could fall into collapsing pockets of ash.

The fire started during the summer of 2022, which was a terrible year for wildfires across Europe, with France particularly badly hit. In total an area seven times the size of Paris burned and more than 19,000 wildfires were recorded.

Although forest fires in the south of France are not uncommon in summer, 2022 saw fires break out across the country in areas including Brittany and eastern France, in addition to the south.

How is it still burning?

The area surrounds the Hostens lake, and it is an old lignite mine – a type of natural coal, sometimes called ‘brown coal’ – as such, as long as it keeps a supply of oxygen, it can continue to burn even underground.

Even though France has seen heavy rains in recent weeks, some parts of the soil in the forest have reached temperatures of 200C, Franck Uteau, an environmental engineer for the Gironde departmental council told BFMTV in December.

Uteau explained: “There is still lignite in the ground, and thanks to a system of tunnels and underground air currents, generated by the root system, the fire sustains itself with the wind.”

In terms of putting the fire out, Uteau said it depends on the quantity of ‘fuel’ below the surface.

“We’ve had rainy spells before, and the hot spots might disappear and then reappear once the rain stops. The fire won’t go out because it has special dynamics that fuel it underground and it seems impervious to outside intervention,” Uteau told 20 Minutes.

The engineer explained that the goal for 2024 will be to work alongside France’s BRGM, the French earth-science institution handling surface and subsurface resources and risks. 

Scientists will seek to determine how much brown coal remains beneath the ground, as well as how much of the lignite has already been burned.

Uteau warned that the fire could end up burning for quite a long time, referencing the Centralia coal mine in the eastern United States, where a fire has been burning below ground for at least 60 years.

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ENVIRONMENT

Tree-killing bugs threaten south-west France forests after wildfires

Last year, ferocious wildfires destroyed thousands of hectares of one of France's most picturesque forests. Now French authorities are battling an invasion of beetles that are devouring the weakened pines of La Teste-de-Buch, in the southwestern region of Gironde.

Published: 26 October 2023 17:52 CEST
Tree-killing bugs threaten south-west France forests after wildfires

“The year 2023 is as cruel and dramatic as the wildfires,” said Matthieu Cabaussel, one of the trustees managing the private forest of La Teste-de-Buch. “It’s a double punishment.”

The stenographer bark beetle, a brown, airborne insect measuring half-a-centimetre, primarily attacks pines damaged by fire or storm.

The parasite lays its eggs in the bark, and when these hatch, the larvae tunnel down into the trunk of the tree until it dies.

Where 250-year-old maritime pines once stood, machines now hum as workers fell, prune, saw and evacuate trees infested with parasites.

Along track 214, which crosses the forest of La Teste-de-Buch, thousands of logs pile up, the symbol of a new environmental threat in a region where wildfires destroyed around 30,000 hectares (74,100 acres) of forest last year.

Experts say that tree felling is necessary to fight the outbreaks of bark beetles, which also affect forests in the east of France, as well as in Eastern Europe.

“Cutting affected trees is the only way to fight this,” Francis Maugard, natural risks manager at the National Forests Office (ONF), a government agency, told AFP.

Maugard said pheromone traps were used to measure the extent of infestation.

Close to the famous Dune of Pilat, Europe’s tallest sand dune, ONF immediately launched a campaign of tree-felling in the national forest of La Teste, half of which had gone up in flames.

Around 80,000 cubic metres of wood have been removed, the equivalent of 20 years of harvest.

But in the private forest, where the nearly 3,800 hectares fell victim to the wildfires, officials were not so quick to act and trees only began to be cut in January.

For Herve Jactel of the French National Institute for Agriculture, Food, and Environment (INRAE), such an approach amounted to “disastrous management.”

Jactel, research director at the institute’s BioGeCo laboratory, also criticised the storage of infested wood in the forest.

“It was the ideal breeding environment,” he said, noting that bark beetles have also reproduced faster due to the high summer temperatures.

“This is a real time bomb,” he said. “If we do nothing, spring 2024 will be a thousand times more dangerous.”

Cabaussel, who helps manage the private forest of La Teste-de-Buch, admitted a number of “difficulties”, including the hot weather and sluggish demand that has slowed down the evacuation of the affected trees.

In late October, some 270,000 tonnes of wood have been evacuated from the private forest and at least twice as much remained to be cut.

Cabaussel hopes to take all the necessary measures, including the felling of the trees during the winter months, when the parasites are inactive, to “save the neighbouring forests.”

The bark beetle has already infiltrated La Teste’s urban areas, forcing people to cut down pine trees in their gardens.

“There is a risk of population explosion,” said Francois Hervieu, Regional Directorate for Food, Agriculture and Forestry (DRAAF), but added that the threat was manageable.

“We are in a situation which requires the greatest vigilance to evacuate the trees in due time.”

ADDUFU, a local association of inhabitants holding a medieval right to collect wood in the forest, has called for the creation of dedicated wood evacuation and storage sites.

“There is still a huge amount of wood to be taken out and we are afraid,” said Philippe Fur, vice president at ADDUFU. He feared that the problem would only worsen in the future.

“The disaster that we’ve suffered is serious because we will not see an old forest in our lifetime again,” Cabaussel said.

“But the forest ecosystems will recover very well.”

In the decimated woods of La Teste-de-Buch, nature is already reclaiming its rights – small pine saplings have popped up amid the charred tree stumps and ferns.

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