Emmanuel Macron specifies his plan to improve fight against fires

The response of the Head of State to the violent fires of this summer combines policy of prevention and support for support for firefighters.

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The assessment is heavy, even if few human victims are to be deplored, two firefighters having died in Loire-Atlantique and in the Bouches-du-Rhône. Summer fires have consumed nearly 72,000 hectares in France, six times more than the average of the last ten years, with a scorching summer, a record drought. And these very intense fires touched the Gironde, at La Teste-de-Buch and Landiras, but also Brittany, in the Monts d’Arrée or the Brocéliande forest, Gard, Jura, Maine-et-Loire…

As of July 20, the head of state, traveling to La Teste-de-Buch, had promised additional means of struggle, aerial in particular, and announced “a major national project to replant”. Friday, October 28, Emmanuel Macron clarified these announcements, thanking some three hundred actors invited at the Elysée, who participated in the mobilization of summer: firefighters, helicopter and bombing water bombers pilots , mayors, staff of the National Forest Office (ONF), farmers, inhabitants, volunteers, civil security associations and even the ambassadors of countries that have come to provide logistical support, such as Germany, Greece, Poland, Romania , Austria, Italy or Sweden.

The Head of State first returned to the results of this “summer in hell”, to use the words of Grégory Allione, the president of the National Federation of Firefighters of France, pronounced during his 128 e congress, in Nancy, September 21. Climatologists and meteorologists, such as scientists from the National Institute for Research in Science and Technology for the Environment and Agriculture, are unanimous in the developments to be expected in the coming years. The fires will be more numerous, more violent in the future, taking advantage of drier vegetation, more scattered lights also on the territory, going up in more altitude and northern areas, with a season that will start in the ‘year and will end later. Making this “exceptional” summer a scenario to repeat itself. This blackboard leads the authorities to want to “change software”, we assure the Elysée.

In his speech, Emmanuel Macron addressed the themes related to fire prevention as those linked to the means to be deployed to fight them. He announced new measures so that the legal obligation of clearing are better applied, with a reinforced communication campaign, a more rigorous control and, in the event of a deficiency, the possibility for the public authorities to replace, with speed, to the owner faulty. A law, announced for 2024, could change the procedures in order to make them clearer.

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