Volunteer firefighters have been called up from their day jobs all over France this summer to help battle wildfires. It’s the first year we’ve been summoned so much to help outside” our region, said 23-year-old Victorien Pottier.
Volunteer firefighters make up more than three-quarters of all the nearly 252,000 firefighters in the country, according to official figures. They have been on the frontline dousing flames this summer as the country tackles a historic drought and a series heatwaves that experts say are being driven by climate change.
These have included a huge blaze in the southwestern region of Gironde, which erupted in July and destroyed 14,000 hectares before it was contained. But it continued to smoulder in the tinder-dry pine forests and peat-rich soil, and flared up again this week, burning a further 7,400 hectares.
When he is not on duty once every five weeks in northwest France, Pottier works preparing orders for a large dairy products manufacturer. In the country’s southwest, Alisson Mendes, 36, a sales assistant for a prominent supermarket group, said she went to help fight the massive blaze in Gironde for two days.
She said she would be prepared to go back, but thought her chances were slim as she had heard there was a long waiting list of other volunteers hoping to go and help out. They prioritise those who’ve never been,” she said.
France’s Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin on Wednesday called on private companies to free up their volunteer firefighters so they could come and help.
Large companies, including the national gas and electricity providers, on Friday said they would do their best.
So did Pottier’s dairy product company. In the beginning, it was not very enthusiastic about him volunteering his time, says Pottier, who has been on call to fight fires for more than three and a half years.
“But then they saw what was in it for them,” he said. We’re good at spotting risky situations within the company, which helps to avoid work accidents.”
Each firm decides how many days they can free up those employees in a case of emergency through a deal they sign with the local firefighting and rescue services. But Samuel Mathis, secretary general of the volunteer firefighter syndicate, says smaller companies cannot so easily afford to do without their staff.
Source: eNCA
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