Bombay Durpun - 'Beginning of the end': Relief but no party as French wildfire winds down

The well-washed-down feast was a just reward. A tiler in civilian life, he has spent days rushing water and carrying hoses behind the firefighters beating back the blazes near his home in the beach resort of Lanton in southwest France.

"I think and hope that the battle's won," Cereja told AFP on Thursday as he returned to the scene of the previous day's flare-up, quenched with the help of water-bombing aircraft and helicopters lent by other European countries.

Backed up by around a dozen volunteers, a small team of firefighters water-lanced the last patches of smoking earth nearby.

It was a far cry from the hundred-strong team of professionals and civilians who had rushed to contain the flames the day before in a blazing heatwave.

But while there was relief that the weather had turned cooler and the flames appeared to be under control, no one was in the mood to celebrate just yet.

"Yesterday morning it was as calm as it is now, and then it all flared up again in the afternoon," Cereja warned.

"These smouldering smoke plumes are extremely dangerous."

- 'Beginning of the crisis' -

As with Cereja, Nina Rosazza was not letting her guard down after a long week of carrying water.

"Now it's starting to take its toll," said the volunteer, who runs a metalworking shop in the nearby seaside town of Andernos-les-Bains with her husband.

"It's the beginning of the end of the fire, but it's the beginning of the crisis," she added.

"This season is a wipe-out. From a tourist, ecological and aesthetic point of view, it's a long-term disaster."

As the ash-grey dust settled on the ground, some finally had time to look back on how the fire had been fought and to criticise the management of the crisis.

One firefighter from the Bordeaux suburb of Merignac complained of the confusing orders handed down by his higher-ups.

"It's driving me crazy -- the bosses are sending us all over the place," he said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to reporters.

"They don't realise how difficult these places are to access."

- 'Not a piece of cake' -

Leaning out the window of his pickup truck while wearing an unbuttoned shirt with Kama-Sutra inspired motifs, Lanton local Paul-Erick Hostein Phenix was likewise livid at the authorities' "catastrophic" management of the crisis.

"They protected the data-centres for American AI companies and the solar farms powering them at the expense of us locals," the face-tattooed environment-conscious farmer told AFP.

"They've even put obstacles in our way while we're trying to go around trying to save animals. I found 13 cats abandoned in one house who were bathing in their own faeces."

But some like Jean-Pierre Glenadel, who ignored the call to evacuate Lanton to hole up in his garden-gnome-adorned house with a vegetable patch instead, were more worried about what comes next.

"But actually, we're still confident that things will pick up again, that people will get back on their feet, that people will come."

O.Mallick--BD