The fire that broke out on Monday in France next to Argelès-sur-Mer, a few kilometers from the Spanish border and which led to the evacuation of some 3,000 people, mainly tourists staying in campsites, was fixed last morning.
In a statement, the Prefecture (government delegation) of the Pyrénées-Orientales department explained that the firefighters managed to stop the fire from advancing in the municipalities of Argelès-sur-Mer, Sorède and Saint André, which was where the fire started. Until early in the morning, 480 hectares had burned in a peri-urban area with a strong concentration of tourists and in a "particularly delicate" situation, according to the Prefecture, due to the intense heat, the drought and strong changing winds that reached 80 kilometers per hour.
To fight the fire, more than 650 firefighters were deployed overnight, partly from nearby departments, which had been supported until nightfall by eleven planes and three helicopters. Likewise, 75 gendarmes were mobilized.
The Prefecture highlighted that there were no victims among the civilian population, although 17 firefighters were slightly injured, mainly due to smoke inhalation.
The authorities preventively evacuated four campsites (in three of them, tourists were able to return before midnight) and dozens of houses in two different neighborhoods. To accommodate nearly 2,000 people, seven spaces were set up in Argelès-sur-Mer, Sorède and Saint-André. Traffic was also interrupted on several roads in the area, as well as on the Perpignan-Cerbère railway line, which leads to the Spanish border along the coast.
