By Marco Trujillo
SAINT-LAURENT-DE-LA-CABRERISSE, France (Reuters) -A massive wildfire that has scorched through 16,000 hectares of forest and villages in southern France since Tuesday has lost intensity but is still not under control, officials said on Thursday.
France’s biggest wildfire in nearly eight decades has killed one person and destroyed dozens of houses. Plumes of smoke rose over the forest area in the Aude region.
Three people are missing and two people including a firefighter are in a critical condition, local authorities said.
Drone footage showed swathes of charred earth after the fire swept across an area one-and-a-half times the size of Paris.
The blaze, around 100 km (60 miles) from the border with Spain, not far from the Mediterranean Sea, has spread unusually rapidly, fanned by strong winds and very dry vegetation, following months of drought in the area.
It is now advancing more slowly, Environment Minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher told France Info radio on Thursday morning.
“The night was cooler, the fire is progressing more slowly, but it remains the most significant wildfire France has experienced since 1949,” Pannier-Runacher said.
“This is a wildfire that is a consequence of climate change, of drought in this region,” she added.
Christophe Magny, one of the officials leading the firefighting operation, told BFM TV that he hoped the blaze could be contained later in the day.
But he warned: “As of now, the fire has not been brought under control.”
Officials said an investigation was under way to find out what caused the blaze.
Scientists say the Mediterranean region’s hotter, drier summers put it at high risk of wildfires.
France’s weather office has warned of a new heatwave starting in other parts of southern France on Friday and due to last several days.
(Reporting by Manon Cruz, Abdul Saboor, Horaci Garcia, Marco Trujillo, additional reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta, Zhifan Liu; Writing by Ingrid Melander; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Alison Williams)
