Macron in the Gard to prepare for the summer after the big forest fires of last year

June 2, 2023

Emmanuel Macron is expected on Friday with Civil Security in the Gard to “prepare for the summer”, which “still promises to be very difficult” after the numerous fires last year, during a trip which coincides with the launch of a “forest weather forecast”.

On the Civil Security air base of Nîmes-Garons, the Head of State will “exchange with all the actors mobilized on the ground to prepare for the summer of 2023”, announced the Elysée.

It is a question of “ensuring that the decisions taken” in the fall “are well implemented on the ground in order to protect the French people”, specified a presidential adviser.

The Head of State is expected at midday on this base which had seen one of its pilots, Franck Chesneau, die while fighting the flames at Générac in the Gard, in August 2019.

In October, after a near-record of burned areas during the summer of 2022, Emmanuel Macron announced several measures “to prevent fires and strengthen the means of fighting, whether material or human”, recalls the presidency. It draws up a positive progress report: nine additional aerial devices from 2023, new columns of mobilizable reinforcement firefighters and progress towards the creation of a fourth military civil security unit.

The president had also announced the creation of a “forest weather forecast”, the first bulletin of which, which was originally to be published on Thursday June 1, was postponed to this Friday to be unveiled during the trip to the Gard.

This new forecast map will present the degree of risk at the departmental level by a color code ranging from green (low) to red (very high) through yellow (moderate) and orange (high).

“This will allow each Frenchman to know what the level of risk is in the department where he is” and to “remember the good gestures”, estimates the Elysée.

“It’s a tool for collective mobilization in a summer that still promises to be very difficult,” added an adviser, noting that as of May 21, 21,000 hectares had already burned in France, compared to 15,000 ha in 2022 on the same date. .

Last year, 72,000 hectares, including 60,000 hectares of forest, went up in smoke in France, and 60,000 people had to be evacuated due to the fires.

It was an “unprecedented climatic event”, a “very dramatic episode which affected the whole of France” with 50 departments affected by fires, recalls the president’s entourage. “We had to change the software to adapt to these new challenges.”