Three firefighters from the Vaucluse Departmental Fire and Rescue Service were sent as reinforcements to Gironde, where 14,000 hectares of forest have already gone up in smoke. These professional firefighters specialize in lighting backfires intended to stop a fire in progress: tactical lights.
40 specially trained Vaucluse firefighters
Tactical fires – today implemented in Gironde – require specific training and a very good knowledge of the elements encountered in the field (nature of plants, evolution of the fire in progress, meteorological data, etc.) Captain Guillaume Vidaï, from SDIS de Vaucluse specifies the work of its men dispatched to Gironde: “Either we use strips, on the sides of the fire, to prevent the fire from spreading, or we light a backfire at the front of the fire”. If the weather conditions allow it, this technique makes it possible to join the two fires and therefore, to stop the fire on the burnt sector voluntarily.