Racing over drought - parched terrain and fanned by winds that 80 k.p.h., a series of fierce fierce fires ravaged large areas of the French Mediterranean coast and Corsica last week. Thousands of soldiers and fire fighters as well as scores of water trucks and aerial tankers were mobilize as flames destroyed more that a score of home and blackened more than 23,000 hectares of bush and forest in the Bouches-Rhone, Bar and Alpes-Maritimes regions. A fire fighter was killed when an exploding tire caused his truck to roll over.