Near Toulouse, a fire breaks out a few minutes after the launch of the… fireworks
By Quentin Marais
Published on
The evening of Sunday August 28, 2022 was placed under the sign of the festivities at The union (Upper Garonne). The fireworks concluded a hot summer… all the way to the area around the launch pad, where a fire broke out.
A few minutes after the start of the fireworks
As mayor of the municipality of Union, Marc Péré participated in this moment of celebration, always eagerly awaited by the inhabitants. From the avenue de Bayonne, he admired the fireworks, fired from the rugby pitches, which runs parallel to a river. After a few minutes, a fire broke out. “In the firing zone, there was a start of fire. The fire was small at first, but the flames grew to two meters high at the end”, says the first aedile.
Fireworks first, then firefighters
But fear did not reach the ranks of the artificers. On the contrary. “They say it’s pretty classic. They have a procedure in the event of a fire starting, had the equipment, were organized and sprayed the immediate surroundings on either side of the fire”, continues Marc Péré. Who had also planned everything to respond to this kind of incident.
“We had been extremely careful to anticipate the thing: how a fire truck could come, how long could it take to do so and what path would it follow to reach this threatened area? The threatened area is the firing zone which is 100m long. The truck arrived without incident, after a few minutes.”
For its part, the Haute-Garonne Departmental Fire and Rescue Service, which therefore took over, indicates that it was alerted at 10:11 p.m. to put an end to this fire which concerned an embankment. The intervention, which mobilized six firefightersended at 11:14 p.m.
“The decision was not easy”
While the summer continues to be marked by a significant drought, the debate on these famous fireworks has never been so active. ” The decision was not easy. Maintain? Cancel? There are thousands of people waiting for him, and the prefecture had not given instructions. So it was a purely municipal decision. »
A choice assumed transformed Marc Péré. “We had decided to cancel if there was wind, because that’s the danger. But there was none. “It is this element that limited the damage: “the fire did not go to the left or to the right”.
The mayor was able to discuss with people from the Union: “they told me that a few years ago, it’s a poplar which had completely burned at the fireworks of the Union… This Sunday, we were lucky, because the fire remained over an area of 2-3 meters wide “.
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