{"id":309225,"date":"2025-08-08T17:30:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T09:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=309225"},"modified":"2025-08-08T17:30:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T09:30:10","slug":"update-frances-huge-wildfire-is-under-control-but-will-still-burn-for-days-authorities-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=309225","title":{"rendered":"Update: France’s huge wildfire is under control but will still burn for days, authorities say"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

PARIS, Aug 8 (NNN-AGENCIES) — France<\/a>‘s biggest wildfire in decades will burn for several more days even though it has been\u00a0brought under control<\/a>, authorities said Friday as hundreds of\u00a0firefighters<\/a>\u00a0kept up a battle against the flames.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The giant blaze in the southern department of Aude has burned through more than 17,000 hectares of land \u2013 an area bigger than Paris<\/a> \u2013 killing one person, injuring 13 and destroying dozens of homes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About 2,000 firefighters are still on duty around the blaze, which was declared under control on Thursday night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fire will not be “declared extinguished for several days”, said Christian Pouget, the prefect for Aude. “There is still a lot of work to be done.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Authorities have banned access to the forests that were devastated by the fire until at least Sunday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They said that roads in the zone were too dangerous because of fallen electricity lines and other hazards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pouget said that about 2,000 people forced to flee the flames had still not been allowed back to their homes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hundreds of people are sleeping in school gyms and village halls across the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fire is the biggest in France’s Mediterranean region for at least 50 years, according to government monitors. The southern region suffers more than others from wildfires<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At its most intense, the flames were going through around 1,000 hectares of land per hour, according to authorities in the nearby city of Narbonne.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two days of strong and changing winds made the blaze difficult to predict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A 65-year-old woman, who had refused to evacuate, was found dead in her scorched house, while 13 people were injured, 11 of them firefighters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The wildfire is a “catastrophe on an unprecedented scale”, Prime Minister Francois Bayrou said Wednesday during a visit to the affected region.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

“What is happening today is linked to global warming and linked to drought,” Bayrou said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Environment minister Agn\u00e8s Pannier-Runacher wrote on X Thursday that the fire was the largest in France since 1949.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The country has already seen around 9,000 wildfires this summer, mainly close to its Mediterranean coast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Europe is the world\u2019s fastest-warming continent, with temperatures increasing at twice the speed of the global average since the 1980s, according to the European Union\u2019s Copernicus Climate Change Service. — NNN-AGENCIES<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PARIS, Aug 8 (NNN-AGENCIES) — France‘s biggest wildfire in decades will burn for several more days even though it has been\u00a0brought under control, authorities said Friday as hundreds of\u00a0firefighters\u00a0kept up a battle against the flames. The giant blaze in the southern department of Aude has burned through more than 17,000 hectares of land \u2013 an area […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":309226,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[209],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309225"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=309225"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":309227,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309225\/revisions\/309227"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/309226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=309225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=309225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=309225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}