As France frets about an extended drought and prospects for more wildfires in another long summer, one blaze that erupted eight months ago in the southwest of the country still smoulders away underground.
Columns of white, acrid smoke rise from a forest floor outside the town of Hostens in the Gironde region, south of Bordeaux. The smell of burning tyres is caused by the brown coal in the area's peaty soil which is fuelling the fire underground.
Pascale Got, a local official in charge of environmental protection, said that the fire at Hostens was under constant surveillance from drones measuring heat levels. The risk from failure to act is collapsing soils, falling trees and the prospect of an endless cycle of increasingly uncontrollable fires that have not only devastated natural habitats but also destroyed homes and businesses.of the year raged in the eastern Valencia region on Friday, destroying more than 3,000 hectares of forest and forcing 1,500 residents to abandon their homes, authorities said.
"The better the forest is looked after, the lower the fire stays," said Pierre Berges, 53, a private forest manager at local business Planfor.
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