Jean-Marie Dubois stood on the charred remains of his terrace looking out over the valley. The once verdant hillside was now a ghostly grey, save for the black skeletons of burnt pine trees. In the foreground, his vineyard had been scorched to a deep tobacco brown, reports The Sunday Times.
“We’ve lost everything,” he said. He and his wife had been on holiday in Sardinia last week when their son called. “He told me ‘Papa, there’s a big fire … and it’s coming towards the house,’” recalled Dubois, a vigneron, or winemaker — but also a professional fireman who has spent his career braced for the threat of summer wildfires.
On Friday the blaze, which destroyed most of his vines — and 1,300 bottles of his finest white wine — was finally brought under control, but not before it had levelled a region of southern French the size of Paris. With temperatures still soaring and embers smouldering deep in the parched ground, there were fears it could reignite at any moment.
The country’s biggest fire in 75 years destroyed thousands of acres of forest, killed an elderly woman in this village of 800 inhabitants and injured several others, including many of Dubois’s colleagues fighting the blaze. It reduced several houses to piles of blackened rubble and left in its wake the burnt-out shells of dozens of cars.
Yet the cruellest blow is the loss of the vineyards, the livelihood for many here in the Corbières region, known for its Grenache and Syrah grapes. It is estimated that around 2,000 acres of vines were destroyed, threatening the survival of family businesses that have shaped this landscape for generations.
Dubois, 53, got home on Thursday to find one end of his house, including the sitting room and his terrace, had been destroyed by the blaze. As the fire drew nearer, his son Julien, 20, a student of viticulture, had followed his father’s instructions on the phone to wet the walls with a hose. It may have helped save half of the building.
Read more of this report from The Sunday Times.