Many residents of the holiday region fear for their economic existence. / Wildfires in southern France
The unadorned exhibition hall next to the gigantic supermarket in La Teste-de-Buch has become a refuge. 250 camp beds, an improvised coffee bar, children’s toys on red gym mats. This is where Thierry ended up.
“My whole family is scattered,” he says. His older son was staying with a friend and his mother-in-law was staying with a family in La Teste-de-Buch. “My wife is in a tiny apartment with their young son, two dogs and three cats, and I stayed here.”
No fixed return date / Wildfires in southern France:
The exhibition hall is the hub, the hub for information. At the reception desk set up by volunteers and community representatives, the same question keeps popping up: when can we go back?
“The most important thing for our employees is to know when they can go back to work,” explains Olivier de Camp, who runs a restaurant. “Le Petit Nice” is located directly on the beach – on the Plage Pyla sur mer. The restaurant is still standing, the flames have spared it. But the restaurateur has so far tried in vain to get the city’s helpers to set a fixed return date.
“We have such a great team in our restaurant, everything went well, we were totally happy,” he says. “Our beach is such a fabulous, sublime, magical place.” Olivier de Camp comes from the region. But the current situation breaks his heart. “I get tears every day.”
Hinds wander about in panic
The flames have engulfed around 23,000 hectares of forest. And lots of animals too, Leslie Crocher fears. “I saw hinds running around in a panic in the center of La Teste-de-Buch. I thought something had to be done.”
The dance teacher came to the emergency shelter with three of her little students. Here they want to make contacts and mobilize helpers. “We put a little bit of food for the animals at the edge of the forest, lettuce and stuff like that, but above all we set up water basins,” she says. They would put stones and sticks in the pools so that even the smallest animals could find their way out again.
Debate on safeguards
The loss of the forest makes many people in the La Teste-de-Buch emergency shelter sad and thoughtful. Why did it burn down so quickly? For several days there has been a heated public debate as to whether ecological protection measures have prevented the planned corridors from being built.
Restaurant operator Olivier de Camp sees a huge construction site here: “We finally have to tackle these firebreaks. Ecology must not lead to the entire forest burning down.” Nature must be protected, the residents, the companies. “We really have to take what happened here as an opportunity to tackle things.”
15 percent of the economy here depends on tourism, tourism in the glorious shade of the pine trees. People know that if the forest doesn’t get back on its feet, it will be difficult for them too.
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