“You see there, the fire it stopped there“, indicates Arnaud Mandousse, the colonel of the firefighters of Gironde, in front of maritime pines calcined from top to bottom. “The houses are there“, he adds, pointing, on the other side of the road, to a housing estate narrowly spared by the flames. 300 people had been evacuated: they were able to return to their homes. The fire which has just ravaged the forest in Arès, in the Arcachon basin, calmed down at the start of the week.
The fire season is not over in Gironde: despite the arrival of autumn, nature has never recovered from the torrid summer it has just experienced. “The vegetation is in a level of desiccation that is really extreme, describes the firefighter. As soon as the slightest spark occurs in the middle of the massif, the fire is likely to start.“
Hundreds of firefighters had to fight until Monday, September 19: their fight had been going on since July 15. “We did La Teste, Landiras…“lists Eva. This 30-year-old audio-prosthetist is a volunteer firefighter, and she lives a few hectometres away. In recent days, it is therefore to protect “her” forest that she has had to mobilize: “It’s a cry of alarm that is launched, an SOS! We are tired of our burning forests, of this nature which is devastated. It hurts my heart, really.“
“Sunday brought tears to my eyes. It’s September and it’s getting tiring.”
If there were no deaths or serious injuries among the population and among the firefighters, the equipment suffered like never before, explains the head of logistics in Gironde, Lieutenant Barriers: “A dozen machines are totally burned, so lost. Others need major repairs. It is more than 30% of our herd, in quotation marks, which is broken.“The columns of firefighters from Isère and Haute-Savoie, who came as reinforcements, therefore brought their own gear to fight the flames.
So for the firefighters of France, it is urgent to strengthen their means: on the occasion of their national congress, for which they have been meeting in Nancy since Wednesday, September 21, they are asking for both more equipment but also the recruitment of more volunteers. According to the National Federation of Firefighters, there would be a shortage of 50,000.
“It’s a cry of alarm, an SOS”: the disarray of the firefighters of Gironde, exhausted by a summer of fires
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