A fire that started at the end of the day on Monday August 8 from Massegros, in Lozère, triggered by an agricultural machine, had already covered more than 400 hectares around 11:00 p.m. and reached neighboring Aveyron, noted a journalist from Agence France- Hurry.
The fire started because of an agricultural machine which, by scraping the very hot tar of the road, in a context of great drought, set ablaze part of a departmental near Massegros, north of Montpellier, according to firefighters . The surface covered, from 50 hectares at 5.30 p.m., quickly increased to 400 hectares around 11 p.m.
200 firefighters from Lozère and Aveyron were engaged, ready to fight the fire all night long. Reinforcements arrived in the evening from Haute-Garonne. The firefighters have secured several houses, without having to evacuate the inhabitants for the time being, they told Agence France-Presse.
The fire moved freely in areas of very dense pine forest and difficult to access towards the gorges of the Tarn. Several fire starts were noted along the RD32 (Lozère) and the RD9 (Aveyron), in particular at a place called Bombes, in Aveyron.
On June 18 and 19, 35 km from Mostuéjouls, another fire in Comprégnac (Aveyron) had covered 430 hectares of forest, without causing any victims. Dozens of people had been evacuated as a precaution.
With already more than 47,000 hectares burned since the beginning of the year, France experienced a record number of burned areas in July, according to the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), which has kept comparable statistics since 2006.