IS PARIS BURNING?

"God gave Noah the rainbow sign / No more water, the fire next time!"

“Is Paris burning?” demanded Hitler as the Third Reich crumbled. He wanted to see the most beautiful city in Europe a smoking ruin. Fortunately the military governor disobeyed his order. Soon, however, we may see the Fuhrer’s wish realised. Tracts of France are already in flames, some not far from where I’m writing. The photograph above was taken yesterday near Bordeaux, about two hours south by train.

Forest fires are increasingly a feature of summer along the Riviera but rare this far north. This time, moreover, I have a personal interest, since our daughter Louise lives in Bordeaux, and, starting Friday, I’ve promised to spend ten days cat-minding while she and her partner are away. Aside from some ash and the small of smoke, there’s apparently little sign of the fires in Bordeaux itself. But I’ve been through this before, and know from experience how far an ember can drift.

Bushfires are a feature of the Australian summer. Australian vegetation might have been designed to burn. Eucalypts – “gum trees” - are filled with infammable oil. In a fire, they don’t simply ignite but literally explode. The effects are apocalyptic. Temperatures top 2000 ° C (3630 ° F), exceeding those recorded during the Allied bombing of Dresden in World War II.

In 1983, the fires were particularly destructive, roaring up the slopes of the mountains outside Sydney and around Melbourne and Adelaide. The press called the worst day Ash Wednesday. A British publisher asked me to write a book on the fires’ causes and effects. It wasn’t a project I relished, but better a dispassionate account from someone who had lost nothing.

Police blocked off the areas worst affected but fortunately I had press credentials, so could drive through what remained, including the town of Cockatoo, outside Melbourne, where eight people died and 300 buildings were destroyed. I passed metal road signs melted until they drooped like dead tulips; stretches of road where the asphalt had burned down to the dirt. People spoke of flaming mattresses hurtling through the air. Almost every house had burned to the ground. Others just exploded. The fire created a near-vacuum outside, and higher air pressure inside the house blew it apart. Only brick chimneys survived. One owner returned to find embers drifting down the chimney has lit a small and mockingly domestic blaze in the hearth.

The book sold well. Not that it did much good. Fires continue, worse each year, and not just in Australia. Most recently Los Angeles. And the fire next time?…Paris? London? New York?

Postscript. The Bordeaux fires and those in the Fontainebleau forest near Paris were deliberately lit– as was the blaze that destroyed Cockatoo. In that case, a professional fireman was charged with arson, though found not guilty.