They team up as a duo in the hell of flames. Two volunteer firefighters in a fierce fight. Their progress is difficult, an almost hand-to-hand battle in extreme conditions. “We are a pair, we complete each other”, describes one of them.
In the Teste-de-Buch and Landiras sector (Gironde), the flames have ravaged nearly 11,000 hectares of vegetation since Tuesday July 12. Some 1,200 firefighters are mobilized to try to control these devastating fires. A France 2 team followed a fire brigade at the heart of these fires.
“It’s a bit complicated, we’re not going to lie to each other”describes a fire soldier. “It’s hot, we have the fumes which are quite demanding at the respiratory level. We have to do the job, we are there for it, the populations are counting on us. So we give the best of ourselves.” Calms are rare for the team, united until the sharing of water. Their bodies are hurting.
At dawn, a firefighter shares his feelings about the progression of the flames. “It’s our home, it’s our land so inevitably, it affects. I live 30 km away”, he points out. “We still have a little fear that it will spread, that it will grow (…) It’s true that it’s quite touching.”
On the ground, other firefighters take over in the face of the incessant return of the flames. The outbreaks of fire multiplied and the temperature exceeded 40°C. A mobilized firefighter, from the Ardennes, had never been confronted with such a situation.
Sunday evening, new evacuations were underway in the Landiras sector, while “the situation is deteriorating” at Teste-de-Buch. The next few hours look like “the most difficult” that the firefighters will have to face since the start of the fires, declared to AFP the spokesperson for the firefighters in the department, Lieutenant-Colonel Arnaud Mendousse.