on a mission with Canadair pilots

Drops of extreme precision to sometimes reach the inaccessible. At the heart of the fight against fires, the 12 Canadairs of civil security and their 80 pilots, already on alert for a very high risk season. It’s a rare sequence. A team from France Télévisions boards a Canadair, for a training mission, in the company of two pilots. A flight on patrol, with four other Canadairs. Scooping, dropping, the pilots will repeat the most technical phases of their mission.

Six tons of water in record time

Water is the sinews of war. Sea, lake, commercial port, river, the areas where they can take water are diverse. We are here above the Rhone. The plane will take six tons of water in its two tanks, in record time. Summer and winter, the objective is the same: to maintain a high level of skills, and to prepare as well as possible against increasingly early fires, such as last week in the Pyrénées-Orientales, where the fire ravaged 1,000 hectares. . To this must be added an exceptional drought context. To face these new challenges, France also has eight Dash and three reconnaissance aircraft.