France has already experienced dozens of wildfires this summer, with a total of 25,000 hectares burned. One significant blaze occurred in the small commune of Planay in the Alpine Savoie département, impacting local resident Dominik Daul and his community.
The wildfire gained national attention when a volunteer firefighter died and key roads were closed, stranding thousands of tourists who were on their summer holidays in the mountains. This incident was one of many blazes across France, including in the forests of Fontainebleau, Pyrénées-Orientales, Drôme, near Marseille, and in Indre.
According to Julien Marion, the director general of civil security, France has recorded just over 8,000 fires since the beginning of the year, with an estimated burned area exceeding 25,000 hectares. This figure is roughly double what was measured at the same time last year.
Dominik Daul, a German national and retired military man who has lived in the French Alps since 2018, shared his experience of the fire. He is also a local councillor and assists vulnerable members of the community. Daul described how emergency services initially dealt with the blazes, but some fires in hard-to-reach areas were left to burn due to low safety risks and the expectation of rain.
"Every day, we got calls from people who owned a chalet up there, who had cows up there, or could see the fire, saying the fire is still growing despite the thunderstorms," Daul told The Local. He and other community leaders repeatedly contacted authorities. "We kept calling. The mayor called the prefecture; he called the SDIS commander."
A helicopter was deployed to dump water on the fire site for 'half an afternoon'. Daul recounted the unsettling atmosphere: "It was like having London fog around your house – but it was wood fire, smoke, and it was getting scary. Six hours later, the fire exploded. Things started falling and the wind started picking up." Online videos showed flames estimated at about 20 meters high on the mountainside.
The escalating situation led to road closures, which caused immediate panic. "Everybody started scrambling," Daul said. The night after the fire's explosion, one firefighter died due to a rockfall on a closed road. "Things started moving in gear and all of a sudden we had 100 firefighters here. We had a huge operations centre and we had helicopters rotating."
The fire spread rapidly across the steep, rocky terrain. It jumped from five to 10 hectares, and by the night of July 7th-8th, it had spread to 80 hectares. Daul lives in a hamlet near Planay, in the Vanoise Valley, which is home to a few dozen people year-round.
The nearby village resort of Pralognan-la-Vanoise, usually home to 650 residents, was hosting between 4,000 and 5,000 visitors during the first week of school holidays. The road closures complicated daily life for these visitors and residents, impacting access to essential services like shops and pharmacies.
Daul and other community leaders organized daily tours with volunteers to ensure the safety of vulnerable residents. One elderly resident was airlifted to a hospital in Grenoble for an urgent medical appointment. Despite the fire's proximity, no large-scale evacuation was necessary for Daul's hamlet, and power was never cut.
Daul, who usually works in real estate, stopped working to coordinate community care. Local shops and the bakery in Pralognan-la-Vanoise continued daily deliveries to ensure food supplies for the large influx of visitors. Deliveries were also organized for the pharmacy to ensure critical medication was available.
Reflecting on the environmental changes, Daul, a former German military mountain ranger, noted the visible impact of climate change in the Alps, such as melting glaciers and earlier snow cover loss. He expressed hope for better budgetary means to enable immediate action against wildfires at their earliest stages. He also pointed to a recent avalanche that dislodged trees, creating a substantial amount of dry pine that could act as tinder for future fires.
The aftermath of the fire continues to affect the region. Roads remain partially passable, complicating daily life and posing concerns for emergency services. The fire has weakened cliffs above the road due to heat and water, increasing the risk of rockfalls. Burned trees will also lose their function in erosion and avalanche protection, adding further stress to the mountain road infrastructure.
"We live here all year. We work here. We look after our neighbours. We check on the elderly. We water the village flowers when the commune staff are overwhelmed. We cook meals for firefighters. We keep these mountains alive," Daul stated. He emphasized that the area is their home, "not a museum, not a postcard, and not a place that only exists when people come on holiday."
“We have a little Casino shop, there. We have a Sherpa shop. There’s a bakery, a pharmacy and that’s it.”
“It’s not about the community losing a couple of hectares of woods that’s never going to be harvested anyway because it’s avalanche protection. It's just to avoid those events becoming uncontrollable.”
