The fires have already ravaged more than 14,000 hectares in Gironde, and firefighters are struggling to control the two fires that have been raging for a week. Eric Flores, vice-president and general controller of the National Federation of Firefighters of France, wishes to alert on the necessary public awareness of the risks of fires, which is currently non-existent. He estimates that “people don’t pay enough attention“and that they need to be trained for these extreme episodes.”Walking in the woods right now is like stepping on a matchbook.“, explains Eric Flores.
franceinfo: have we ever been faced with such a situation, in terms of virulence and duration?
Eric Flores: We have already been faced with a comparable situation last year in the Var, where just over 7,000 hectares were devastated. These are extreme situations that make the fight very complicated at the moment and all fires are different. The real subject is human activity since 90% of our fires are linked to human activity. People don’t pay enough attention.
What about prevention?
It is crucial. Nine out of ten of our fires come from human activity, the number of fire starts has nothing to do with climate change. Admittedly, there is a real water shortage in the plants, but the problem is that people are not paying attention. The fires are not necessarily intentional but as I often say, walking in the forest right now is like walking on a pack of matches. People need to be aware of that. For us, the training of the population in the risks of civil security with climate change is not only about fires, it is also about extreme weather conditions such as storms or Cevennes phenomena. We alert the population and the public authorities to say, ‘yes, we must train the population’. Today, this is not the case, there is no training on civil security risks. No one knows how to act in a forest when it’s 40 degrees. No one yet knows how to act when there is a flood. We would therefore like there to be this training in civil security actions, organized by the government.
Do French firefighters have the technical means to fight against such fires?
Regarding the material means, we are largely prepared to cope. Now, we need work on the territorial network of our firefighters and our rescue centers. In the space of twenty years, we have lost almost 600 barracks in France and 50,000 volunteer firefighters in France. This is also what we want to warn about: the lack of staff and volunteer firefighters in the territorial network to occupy our entire territory with rescue centers that allow us to intervene quickly on all fires.