I’ve never received a local emergency alert. They are loud, strident. At first, they were confusing, too.

On Saturday (1 August) we were heading west on the A8 near Brignoles in our new Renault 4e, a car whose bells, whistles and warnings we’re still warming to. Our gut response was that the clamouring was one of those warnings. But there was nothing on the dashboard to indicate any urgency whatsoever. Then I looked down to where our phones, sitting back-to-back on the console, were rattling, blinking and hopping. “ALERTE – FUE EN COURS” it read. “ALERT – FIRE IN PROGRESS”, all caps, issued from the Var prefecture.

“Évitez le sector”, it continued. Avoid the sector, followed by temporary evacuation instructions.

The warning was specifically for the villages of Montfort-sur-Argens and Carce, near the Gros Bessillon massif, where a fire that recently burned more than 4000 hectares was brought under control earlier in the week, had flared up again. Fueled by extreme heat and the mistral, another 1000 hectares were destroyed in about six hours on Friday night and Saturday morning. The fire ultimately burned about 1850 hectares and forced the evacuation of 2800 people before the spread was stabilized by Sunday evening. More from Ici.fr here.

The alerts below, in French and with English translations.