At 1 pm on Tuesday, July 8, under a sky that had suddenly turned yellow, ash began to fall on downtown Marseille. It was a tangible and very spectacular consequence of the major fire that had been raging for two hours across several hundred hectares north of the city. The fire spread to the urban areas of L'Estaque, Saint-Henri, and Saint-André, coastal neighborhoods in Marseille's 16^th arrondissement, and progressed extremely "rapidly," as explained by Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, who arrived in Marseille at 10 pm for a one-hour visit.

This disaster, unprecedented in scale for Marseille's region, has not claimed any human lives, according to local authorities on Wednesday morning, but it did cause tremendous anxiety throughout the day and significant material damage. The fire also forced Marseille-Provence Airport to close until mid-evening, stopped rail traffic between Marseille and Avignon – disrupting high-speed links to Paris – and forced authorities to shut down several roads, including the A55 highway, creating a traffic jam that only cleared late in the evening.

The flames mainly damaged several dozen homes along its path, completely destroying some in the Pelouque, Nerthe, and Marinier neighborhoods of Marseille. By early evening, the municipal police, who were very active on the ground, said they had evacuated more than 450 people, including around 100 employees from a large call center in Saint-Henri. Around 50 residents who were unable to return to their homes spent the night in one of four centers specially opened by the Marseille city council, some fearing that their homes would not be intact when they returned.

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