Almost two months that the Breton firefighters intervene on various vegetation fires in the region and elsewhere in France. Despite their fatigue, the firefighters continue to intervene in particular on the fire in the forest of Brocéliande, in the town of Campénéac (Morbihan) since Friday August 12.
At the refueling center, a team gathers strength before returning to face the flames. These three firefighters and the only professional firefighter are drinking coffee. For Loïck, firefighter and dairy driver, fatigue is felt. “I no longer count the number of interventions on which I intervened. It’s not always easy, but we do what we can. We leave some things aside like family time. I missed my granddaughter’s one year old. Immediately, this grandfather’s eyes filled with tears.
Guillaume, a first aid trainer and firefighter, was triggered while he was at the restaurant with his parents. “The dish arrived when I was paged. So I didn’t eat and I didn’t see my parents again, they were returning from their vacation here.”
Anne-Sophie is a childcare assistant in a children’s center in emergency reception. This mother of four children has also been a firefighter for twenty years. She does not say she is tired because she “took a few days off”. She experiences another feeling. “Fire does not necessarily come on its own, so I feel anger against possibly a person who has engaged in risky behavior or has done so intentionally”. This Saturday, August 13, the gendarmerie investigation continues: no track is ruled out, none is privileged to explain the outbreak of fire in the Brocéliande forest.
These firefighters assure it, the support of the population affects them.
Health professionals listening to firefighters
The firefighters can share their feelings with the doctors and nurses of the health and medical rescue service present near the Campénéac gymnasium. The chief medical officer of the Morbihan firefighters Valérie Seyssiecq observes great fatigue from the firefighters. “There it burns so much everywhere in France that the solicitation begins to be too strong. Fatigue arrives. We had enormous heat strokes. We have a forest fire truck which was caught in the flames and some firefighters saw each other die. So we took care of them psychologically. When you’re a firefighter, it’s not a weakness to say that you were scared at that moment.”
Forest fires are singular interventions with specific constraints according to the chief medical officer of the Morbihan firefighters Valérie Seyssiecq. “We are in a heat wave. You imagine intervening under 40 degrees with protective equipment and the calorific effect of the fire. These are people who will have a significant physical consumption. We are vigilant about the states of fatigue of the firefighters. “ The support of these health professionals is intended for the firefighters but also for the gendarmes and the farmers, in short for all the people who have been near the flames.