Riviera Fire Controlled

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30822, 6 August 1965, Page 11

Riviera Fire Controlled

(N.Z P.A -Reuter—Copyright) LE LAVANDOU (French Riviera), August 5. Firemen and troops kept an all-night watch near Le Lavandou ready to quell any new outbreaks of the three-day Riviera forest fire.

The blaze which terrorised 10,000 campers and charred vast areas of woodland was burning in only two places during the night. These were at the coastal village of le Canadel and further inland near Correns.

Last night fire-fighters appeared to have the fire under control after violent mistral winds dropped yesterday. In Corsica, where fires have destroyed 120,000 acres of forest in a month, a state of emergency was called off as the wind died down. Two Dead

Two persons died in the Riviera blaze and 17 were in hospital with burns. At Grasse, 10 miles north of Cannes, and about 50 miles

from Le Larandou, police said they had arrested a 17-year-old fireman who allegedly admitted starting a number of bush fires in the area in the last week.

The Interior Minister (Mr Roger Frey) said after touring the area that new firefighting teams and equipment would be organised before next summer. The Riviera fires are an annual event.

Mr Frey suggested training in forest fire control for city firemen, “flying firemen” with their own helicopter transport, and five or six large helicopters for rescue and patrol work. Mr Frey said a “real inventive effort" must be made to create “equipment which does not exist anywhere in the world.”

It must be “light but very effective ... we need, in fact, to miniaturise the existing equipment,” he said. One of the major problems in the area is that large tanker trucks cannot get far into the rugged hills, and small vehicles that can get in only carry water for a few minutes’ fire-fighting.

Satellite Map.—Manus and Bouganville Islands, north of New Guinea, are to be mapped by a satellite in a joint United States-Australian project, the Army Minister (Dr A. J. Forbes) has announced. —(Canberra, August 5.)