| Submit your comments on this article |
| Europe |
| The French Riviera Is Burning |
| 2003-07-29 |
| Forest fires swept through the French Riviera on Tuesday, killing at least three people, devastating scenic woods and forcing the evacuation of thousands of people from prized vacation areas. Firefighters speculated that the fires — some 30 that broke out nearly simultaneously on Monday — were caused by arson. Molotov cocktails were found in the region, according to radio and television reports. That’s a lot of fires for one arsonist. The mayor of Roquebrune-Sur-Argens, Luc Jousse, called the fires ’’a new form of terrorism.’’ Corsicans? Firefighters and equipment were sent from elsewhere in France, and even from Italy, to back up the approximately 1,500 firefighters who worked through the night. Some 100 extra soldiers also were sent to help 300 troops already in place. Fires raged through some of the most prized vacation areas in the Var region, concentrated in the areas around Frejus, 25 miles from Cannes and Sainte-Maxime, to the west. President Jacques Chirac, in Papeete, Tahiti, promised that ’’the guilty will be sought out with extreme rigor’’ and ’’sanctions will be of an extraordinary severity.’’ "Now excuse me, I have to work on my tan." |
| Posted by:Steve |
| #4 Maybe we should send some of our smokejumpers to help out the........oops just kidding |
| Posted by: wills 2003-7-29 5:38:26 PM |
| #3 No doubt but that the tinder like conditions will be pinned on the Bush administration's failure to ratify the Kyoto treaty. Causuality, like logic, falls to the wayside in the minds of the rabid left seeking to tear down the President. |
| Posted by: ColoradoConservative 2003-7-29 2:04:57 PM |
| #2 Guess this isn't the fire department's week to go on strike. |
| Posted by: tu3031 2003-7-29 1:27:33 PM |
| #1 With the growing Islamic population of "La Belle France" don't ya know that those trees are gonna interfer with the time honored occupations of goat herding and camel driving. Maybe if they had allowed low scale burns to burn off the scrub then they wouldn't be seeing their version of what we had at Yellowstone |
| Posted by: Someone who did NOT vote for William Proxmire 2003-7-29 11:34:46 AM |