Firefighters from the Center-Val de Loire region arrived on Tuesday 13 September in Saumos, Gironde, to help their colleagues who are fighting a fire that has burned 1,800 hectares of forest since Monday afternoon.
In the middle of the night, between 1 am and 2 am, the reinforcements of the fire brigade departed from Orléans, Bourges, Châteauroux and Tours for the Gironde, where a fire has raged since 12 September.
The 44 firefighters from 4 departments in the Center-Val de Loire region have reconstituted a column of “urban fire” in Niort with reinforcements from Sarthe, Maine-et-Loire and Vendée. All are part of the common goods of the West Zone.
A total of ten cars are part of the convoy: fire engines, tankers and 10 light vehicles with 73 firefighters arrived shortly after 11 am on 13 September in Saumos, near Lacanau, in Gironde. Already 1,800 hectares of forest have gone up in smoke and more than 500 inhabitants have had to be evacuated in twenty-four hours.
Lieutenant Florian Chaineaud, director of the center, CTA CODIS de l’Indre explains the role of this “urban fire” column. It is not intended, unlike a column of “forest fire”, to attack the fire, with specific vehicles, in the forest, but it is there to support and strengthen the system put in place in Gironde.
This column “urban fires” ensures the defense of sensitive points. The machines are positioned on the outskirts of the forest and the firefighters’ mission is to protect homes.
Lieutenant Florian Chaineaud Head of the CTA-CODIS Indre center
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Lieutenant Chaineaud of the CODIS of Indre, specifies that it is the 11th times that reinforcements have been engaged since July in forest fires in Gard, Gironde, Sarthe and Brittany. A difficult summer for the firefighters that continues in Gironde, a department particularly hit in the months of July and August by the fires that destroyed almost 30,000 hectares of forest.
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