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A HUGE FIRE, apparently started deliberately, tore through the Grande-Synthe migrant camp near the northern French city of Dunkirk late last night, reducing it to “a heap of ashes”, the regional chief said.
Firefighters said at least 10 people had been injured in the blaze at the camp, which was home to some 1,500 people, mostly Iraqi Kurds, living in closely packed wooden huts.
“There is nothing left but a heap of ashes,” Michel Lalande, prefect of France’s Nord region, told reporters at the scene as firefighters continued to battle the flames which were visible from several kilometres away.
It will be impossible to put the huts back where they were before.
The fierce blaze destroyed most of the 300 huts in the camp and had still not been extinguished at 2:00am, 1am Irish time.
The migrants were evacuated and would be rehoused in emergency accommodation, the prefect said, adding that the Dunkirk suburb of Grande-Synthe had already made two gymnasiums available.
Lalande said the blaze had been started after a fight yesterday afternoon between Afghans and Kurds at the camp that had left six injured with knife wounds.
“There must have been fires deliberately set in several different places, it is not possible otherwise. It seems that it is related to fights between Iraqis and Afghans,” said Olivier Caremelle, chief of staff of Grande-Synthe mayor Damien Careme, an environmentalist who supported the building of the camp last year.
“What I can see for myself is that everything has burned down. There is a communal kitchen and the information point, but it’s impossible to walk through the camp and get a really accurate idea of the extent of the damage,” Caramelle said.
Fights between the migrants continued after midnight, with riot police struggling to contain them and occasionally being pelted with stones, according to an AFP correspondent.
The population of the Grande-Synthe camp has swelled since the destruction last October of the squalid Jungle camp near Calais, about 40 kilometres away.
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A country living in the Stone ages.
@Davy Evans: would you give over. For God sake, people love moaning.
There’s challenges in this industry & people don’t want to work there. It’s tough in times of bad weather in the good times, but with people just constantly giving out and media needing to fill their websites to get clicks, it exacerbates the problem and has a negative sentiment against those that work in the industry. Sometimes this negative sentiment can manifest itself in physical harm and/or abusive language directed at them. All they are trying to do is to earn a living.
Anyway, rant over. Cheerio.
@Andy O’B: oh come on! Most European countries have much worse weather for much longer periods and continue to function…a smattering of snow and a bit of frost and Dublin airport is paralysed! Ridiculous!
@Andy O’B: I agree, most other countries face delays and cancellations when faced with weather events and deicing of aircraft is essential as is safe runways and taxiways and ramps and during falling snow this can be hard. As I write Manchester seems to have issues and maybe some of the cancelled flights could be due to other airport’s issues. Ireland is the great land of knockers unfortunately. What about a headline saying 143 flights managed to get into and out of Dublin airport despite snow and ice and limited viability… Is it too much to ask to be positive? It is a mindset
@Davy Evans: ya know where the airport is then.
@Ronan Skelly: kinda supporting Andys point there, most European countries which have “much worse weather for longer periods” are far more experienced and equipped to deal with such conditions.
@Ronan Skelly: you read my mind dead right
@The Divils Avocado: Yes, but they also have staff to work….Airlines at Dublin are operating with a minimum of staff members in all positions…
@Aidocasey: It’s just like hospitality. Any industry demanding a lot of staff regardless of footfall just cannot strike the balance. If you have 1 passenger, you need pilots, stewards, ground crew, mechanics, sales teams, fire crew, atc, security staff, airport police, check in and boarding staff etc etc. To pay all these people the high wages needed to attract and keep staff, particularly in Dublin where the rental and housing market is insane means the DAA and airlines need to increase landing fees, terminal fees etc, passed onto the airlines. Then the cost of air fares will rise so less people will travel on holidays or leisure travel. There will be less people travelling so there won’t be enough budget to employ the staff and the vicious circle continues.
@Andy O’B: I’m not completely disagreeing with you, but if these major well off companies treated their staff a bit better and didn’t pay minimum wage, these services would be 20 times better. The gap between the rich and the working class (never mind the gap between rich and poor) is getting out of control.
@Andy O’B: he didn’t say anything about the workers at the aerport…he just said basically as a nation we are way behind in some services…
@Aidocasey: that’s a management problem
@Davy Evans: Hop on the next available flight then why don’t you
@Johnny Kelly: The answer is not to run away. Stay and try change things.
Such a shock, we have never seen weather like this before.
Manchester Airport is closed, so the problems don’t just happen at Dublin.
@Dave Byrne: Suppose if Dublin is closed people can always fly to one of our other international airports
every time it snows a little there is this chaos. will they never learn
Copenhagen Airport is at freezing point and operating normally, including Ryanair flights. Yet Dublin Airport are putting the blame entirely on airlines like Ryanair for lack of provision of de-icing. DAA provides the permits, infrastructure & space for systems to operate or not. Why are airlines facing issues at DUB when central northern & east Europe can operate reasonably smoothly? We have systems not been tested periodically since October in preparedness? Same old, same old “we couldn’t have foreseen it” excuses will be forthcoming or the “we rarely need it”. We are of a latitude of clashing weather fronts, inevitably our share of icing days. De-icing needs to be provided close to take-off before it loses affect, DAA need to provide areas close to runways for these ops.
How come other European countries can manage this and here it’s like the end of time. Can’t get there act together like they never knew this was coming and guess what we are in winter
@John Quinn: 400 years of oppression and poverty have stunted our ability to develop anywhere near the same level as the imperial Euros. Ask people if they would rather have an international airport or €20
I lived in Reykjavík for four years,often traveling to England to visit family. I never once had a cancelled flight. The buses ran on time too.
I was one of the lucky ones with only a 3hr delay to Edinburgh, Ryanair communication horrendous, people flying to Brussels at 8am still in the terminal 7 hours later and their flight was probably cancelled after all, they were sitting in the plane for 4 hours then told to get a coffee and stretch their legs for 45 mins, most frustrating, customer service dropping calls, sole attendants getting it in the neck from irate passengers.
How come other European countries can manage this and here it’s like the end of time. Can’t get there act together like they never knew this was coming and guess what we are in winter
How can there be a big knock on, flights into Dublin were cancelled and there were a lot of them.
The Bottom line is the Airport is an absolute disgrace to let this occur. Airports around the world run on temperatures a lot lower than we experienced.
So who is at fault my Daughters flight from carcassonne was cancelled and airline said not their fault hotels, car rental all lost
@James Johnson: It is not the airport’s job to make sure the airlines planes are in a condition to fly. The airport did their job and it was fully operational. It is the airlines job to have their planes ready to fly, but they did not. The airlines failed in their job. There’s an awful lot of people complaining about the airport even though it is 100% the airlines who failed.
Took us 8 hours to get off yesterday. Which I could deal with even with a small baby but it was the lack of information that was frustrating. We were stuck on go to gate for the entire day and nobody had any info if our flight would be going at all. Multiple different flights also directed to go to the same gate at same time didn’t help either. It was a mess.
@Sean Partidge: we were delayed too then we sat on the plane for a further 3.5 hrs and eventually took off but the provisions on board were insufficient , plane full of hungry people with food for less than 1/4 . No water either . The food trolly started selling the meals at first few rows and ran out but the children on flight were further down the back and got nothing ! A tub of pringles or a bar of chocolate after waiting to depart at 1:30 pm and finally arrived at destination at 11pm !
How come other European countries can manage this and here it’s like the end of time. Can’t get there act together like they never knew this was coming and guess what we are in winter
@John Quinn: You obviously don’t read or watch tv… Dublin Airport is not the only airport suffering..
Liverpool also closed !!
500 million profit for Ryanair this year and they Fail to Hire enough de-icers for their fleet during the Winter months to me is a sackable offence.!!
Wouldn’t happen in Cork Airport
FFS
The DAA strike again, made all their gritting crews redundant last year, expected local farmers to provide gritting machines & they didn’t turn up!
No frost in Dublin this morning. A balmy 2°
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