Faced With Record Fires, France Skimps on Fire Crews
This summer, France again saw hellish heat waves and record-high wildfires. But the job of dealing with fires is increasingly pushed onto volunteers, as an austerity government refuses to invest in its professional firefighting force.
French firefighters’ unions have planned three days of protest action after record fires this summer. Global warming is making disastrous wildfires ever more common, and government austerity is starving the fire service of funds. (Romain Perrocheau / AFP via Getty Images)
For thirty years, Patrice Hureaux has fought fires in his forest-covered corner of southwestern France. Every summer, he and his team work diligently to put out fires in the woods right as they start. Landes, where he lives and works, is one of the most wooded of France’s 101 local départements, with fully two-thirds of its territory covered in trees. He and his colleagues have their work cut out for them, but the vigilance is worth it.
“It’s much easier to put out a fire when it starts than to let it build in intensity,” Hureaux told me earlier this month. “After, you need much more water and much more resources.”
This summer has presented a particularly grueling challenge for France’s volunteer firefighters like Hureaux, as well as its understaffed professional forces. Out-of-control fires have swept across stretches of land four times as large as Paris, causing a quarter of a million people to flee their homes, injuring hundreds of firefighters, and leaving four firefighters dead.
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