By Gilles Guillaume and America Hernandez
PARIS, July 5 – The third stage of the Tour de France that will take place on Monday will be closed to the public due to risks posed by a forest fire raging in southwestern France, officials said on Sunday.
The fire has ravaged more than 1,600 hectares (6.18 square miles) some 60 km (37 miles) from the finish line in Les Angles and is still spreading.
Images of the fire show billowing black smoke, with eyewitnesses reporting scorching winds, hot ground, difficulty breathing in the vicinity and poor visibility beyond 2 metres (6.56 feet).
The race route will remain unchanged, but the Tour’s publicity caravan will not drive along the last 40 km into France from Spain where it began on Saturday.
Cyclists will proceed autonomously and only with staff strictly necessary to keep the race going, according to the prefecture of the Pyrenees-Orientales department.
Extreme heat and wildfires have broken out across Europe, with blazes in France and Spain raising safety concerns around this year’s Tour de France, which kicked off in Barcelona on Saturday.
“An exceptional fire calls for exceptional measures for the Tour,” said race director Christian Prudhomme, who had previously said the route could be adapted if necessary.
Officials called on the public to refrain from heading to the race trail or finish line, allowing security forces to free up manpower to fight the forest fire that is still spreading.
HOT WINDS, 18-KILOMETRE FIRE FRONT
Some 750 firefighters, 200 vehicles and nine water-bombing helicopters and other aircraft have been deployed to contain the fire in the Pyrenees-Orientales department, with a front line stretching 18 km, according to the departmental prefect.
No deaths have occurred so far, though two people — one firefighter and one resident — are in critical condition. Firefighters hope to prevent the outbreak spreading south toward the Tet river and the Aspres mountainous region, which is arid and hard to reach.
Seven departments in the south of France were classed as having a “very high fire risk” on Sunday by Meteo France.
In Spain’s Catalonia region, where the first two stages of the race took place, a wildfire that ravaged about 2,200 hectares of forest in Les Gavarres has been stabilised, officials said on Sunday, but high temperatures and fumes could still complicate efforts to extinguish it.
That blaze, which broke out on Friday in Catalonia’s Costa Brava, is thought to have been caused by a worker using a circular saw near a road, resulting in sparks that kindled and spread, local authorities said. The suspect was arrested on Friday.
(Reporting by America Hernandez, Gilles Guillaume and Vincent Daheron in Paris, Javi West Larranaga in Gdansk; Editing by Christina Fincher and Sharon Singleton)
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