Fighting forest fires: Federal police should get new helicopters for 1.5 billion euros

Enlarge image

Firefighting helicopter of the federal police in Brandenburg 2019

Photo: Federal Police/ DPA

After numerous devastating forest fires, the Federal Police should get up to 44 new transport helicopters.

"With 1.5 billion euros over the next few years, it is one of the largest investments in the Federal Police ever," Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told SPIEGEL.

According to the SPD politician, the approximately 12-ton aircraft can take water from rivers and lakes to extinguish and transport up to 3000 instead of up to 2000 liters at a time.

Fighting forest fires is not the main task of the federal police helicopters, "but an important support to the federal states," emphasized Faeser.

It is still unclear which manufacturer will be involved in the procurement, an award procedure is underway.

The helicopters are to be delivered gradually over the years and significantly increase the transport capacity of the Federal Police.

According to the authorities, the federal police have helped in the past few months in the federal states to extinguish forest fires in Saxon Switzerland, the Lieberoser Heide in Brandenburg, in Berlin's Grunewald and in the Hessian district of Darmstadt-Dieburg.

The federal police helicopters were in the air for a total of 327 hours and dropped more than four million liters of water.

Wow