A brush fire broke out overnight Monday to Tuesday in Alata, a town near Ajaccio, while South Corsica was under an orange alert for thunderstorms. The fire is believed to have been caused by a power line brought down by violent gusts of wind, and not by lightning as initially reported.
The flames burned approximately nine hectares without directly threatening homes. Despite shelter-in-place orders, nearly 200 people spontaneously left the Castagnola area, a residential neighborhood in the town. Residents began returning to their homes around 3:45 a.m.
Significant resources have been mobilized to fight the flames.
On Tuesday morning, 62 firefighters were still on the scene. Two water-bombing aircraft and two helicopters were deployed to treat the fire's perimeter and various hotspots. The fire was declared contained, although smoldering embers remained in the area.
The Château de la Punta, a historical monument built at the end of the 19th century with stones from the Tuileries Palace, was not directly threatened. The prefecture specified that the fire was not in the immediate vicinity of the building overlooking the Gulf of Ajaccio.
Four hundred homes without electricity
The power line failure caused an outage affecting approximately 400 customers. EDF is installing generators to gradually restore power. One of the priorities is to refill the pump at the municipal water reservoir, which is essential for supplying the fire department.
Météo-France had forecast gusts of between 100 and 110 kilometers per hour, with peaks reaching 130 kilometers per hour. This fire is part of a particularly violent storm system that swept across several departments in southern France. In the Aude department, a tornado caused significant damage and injured dozens of people in Pomas.
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