The south-east of France is highly exposed to the risk of fires in July. Indeed, the configuration is favorable to forest fires: drought well established on the territory, high temperatures in the four corners of the country and gusts of wind up to 90km/h. The General Directorate of Civil Security calls on the inhabitants of the region to be very careful at this time.
As indicated by BFMTV, the Bouches-du-Rhône prefecture had to ban access to 23 of the 25 forests in the department this Wednesday, July 6, 2022. “The region has experienced a significant rain deficit since the beginning of the year. , and the episodes of heat follow one another”, specifies the news channel continuously.
On its official website, the Ministry of Ecology recalls that France is the fourth most wooded European country with 16.9 million hectares of forest in France alone.
“Over the period 2007-2018, there was an annual average of 4,040 fires which ravaged 11,117 hectares of forest*. The majority of these fires took place in the Mediterranean area (…) The meteorological conditions (drought, temperature and wind ) have a strong influence on the sensitivity of vegetation to fire and on the spread once the fire has started”, specifies the government.
Thus, some departments are more at risk than others. In our slideshow below, discover the territories where the most fires qualified as forest fires were recorded between 2007 and 2018.
*Source: BDIF and Prometheus databases.