"We are alone in the world." That sentence will echo for a long time in Denis Bruno's mind. "Just imagine the scene..." said the 65-year-old retiree. "The fire surrounded my house, it was two meters from the facade and very close in the garden behind. I was soaking the walls as best I could with my garden hose, and the firefighter holding the hose said to me, 'We are alone in the world.'"

Already worried about the intensity of the flames, Bruno admitted that fear overcame him. It was a feeling he had never known, but it stayed with him during the long hours when the fire circled around Coustouge, his village in the southern department of Aude, near the Spanish border. "Being surrounded by flames, hearing their sound, it's terrifying. But I had to stay to protect what makes up my life, what I've built."

Many others have felt the same fear, each in their own way, when confronted with the wave of fire that is sweeping through the Corbières, a hilly region at the foot of the Pyrénées mountain range, since Tuesday, August 5, at 4 pm. In Coustouge, where three houses burned, some of the 116 residents fled on Tuesday evening from the flames that raged throughout the night. On Wednesday, some returned by the end of the day only to see a scene of devastation.

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