The soldiers of the fire are worried at the approach of the summer season: in full deconfinement, the number of volunteer firefighters could be reduced, the air resources are limited, and the vigilance of the population slacken.
Read also: The number of fires worries firefighters
Monitoring and fighting fires that devour an average of 9,300 hectares of forest each year around the Mediterranean "requires (s) a massive mobilization of human and material resources as well as adapted and vigilant behavior from the population as a whole" , said Monday the Bouches-du-Rhône firefighters.
However, "volunteer firefighters may be less available due to increased paid or liberal activity during the summer to compensate for the loss of activity in the spring," they explain.
Added to this fear is that of a "loosening" of the population "following confinement", which could encourage fires. To prepare, the Bouches-du-Rhône firefighters already resumed some training and checks on fire-fighting equipment last Monday, which had been postponed.
Questioned by AFP, the Var firefighters, another department on the front line facing the fires, said "share this questioning", and wait "impatiently" for the details of the deconfinement plan.
"The biggest summer days, up to 1,200 firefighters are mobilized per day" in the Var, between beach surveillance, prepositioned teams against forest fires or the holding of barracks, continued one of their spokespersons.
Will there be enough volunteers? They are "above all employees (...) they have a job" and can only join the firefighters "when they have an availability", recalls André Goretti, one of the leaders of the Autonomous Federation of professional firefighters .
In a department like the Alpes-Maritimes, where this trade unionist works, "the concern is that current interventions", which had become scarce with confinement, add to the "risk of forest fires" and " to a resurgence of the pandemic ”.
Fears shared up to the National Federation of Firefighters, whose Vice-President Hugues Deregnaucourt calls for "citizenship of business leaders" so that they let, despite their economic situation, their employees join the volunteer firefighters this summer.
The fear of contamination that some employers may also have is unjustified, when the profession has "very few patients," he said.
- "Don't forget the rules" -
In this context, the frequentation of beaches or massifs, a possible influx of tourists in the South if holidays abroad are impossible are all factors watched by professionals, who have already struggled, before the start of the "season »Fires, against several fires, in Corsica in February or mid-April near Bordeaux.
Especially since this year, the air resources are limited, because some water-launching planes, the trackers, have been stored: "we have more than a quarter of the air capacity less, which will have to be compensated by troops on the ground ”, underlines Mr. Deregnaucourt.
Union side, Stephan Le Bars, pilot representative (SNPNAC) regrets the arrival of new planes to replace obsolete models, while Canadian aircraft are still under maintenance.
"Not only can we fear that there are not enough means on the ground, but we will not be able to support them as we would like because we will not have the means" adequate air, fears -he. Besides the pilots would have had "less training than in other years", because of the confinement.
The pilot training had to be postponed, concedes the spokesperson for civil security, Michaël Bernier, but "everything has been rescheduled with one objective: to be ready for the start of the season".
However, like the others, this professional wants to "remind people to be vigilant: it is not because we are going to deconfinate that we must forget all the rules of prevention of forest fires", that a simple cigarette butt or the spark from a gardening appliance can trigger.