Marta Azevedo Silva, the Communication and Press Manager at European Emergency Number Association (EENA), recently caught up with Colonel Pierre Bépoix, Deputy Chief of Department, Bouches-du-Rhône Fire and Rescue Service (SDIS 13), France to investigate how Bouches-du-Rhône tackles forest fire not only from a prevention perspective but also in terms of preparedness and response activities.
Provence, located in the South of France, is one of the mainland’s driest places. This region is a sunny paradise with large amounts of vegetation, vineyards and diverse fauna. However, the high temperatures, the dry soil and vegetation, the strong winds and rare rainfalls make it prone to forest fires and a big challenge to local authorities.
Climate change consequences like droughts and heatwaves increase forest-fire risk and make fire seasons longer, especially in Mediterranean countries, a European hotspot. However, the fire brigades in the South of France have acquired a solid reputation for dealing with this type of hazard, making the region more resilient and even channelling assistance to other countries through the EU Civil Protection Mechanism.
At the EENA Conference and Exhibition 2022, Colonel Pierre Bépoix, Deputy Chief of Department, Fire and Rescue Service of Bouches-du-Rhône (SDIS 13), France, addressed how to prevent and mitigate forest fires in the summer season. Ironically, the Conference took place in Marseille, one of the sunniest places in France, from 27 to 29 April 2022.
IFF: What are your main tasks as the Deputy Chief of Department, Fire and Rescue Service of Bouches-du-Rhône?
PB: As deputy chief of department, my main missions are to assist my superior by guaranteeing the operational capacity of the fire and rescue service at all times.
To do this, I strive to work transversally by coordinating all the support services (logistics, finance, etc.) which directly or indirectly contribute to the public emergency service rendered.
I also participate in operational on-call duty to supervise the emergency management centre and ensure command of major rescue operations on the county territory, if necessary.
By advising the fire & rescue service administration council, I also participate in the definition of the strategic orientations as well as in the implementation of the public fire and rescue policy.
My position is therefore an alliance of human management skills, operational command and resource management, all in direct interface with public authorities and private operators of the territory.
IFF: Prevention is key to crisis response. How can we prevent and prepare for forest fires?
PB: There is a famous quote by Benjamin Franklin saying that ‘an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure’.
Preventing forest fires in the South of France is indeed essential. It is based on important teamwork, involving various stakeholders. Among them are state services, the National Forestry Office, Regions, Counties, Local Communities and, finally, fire and rescue services. Together, we act in order to plan forest land-use. It means conceiving local plans and strategies – urban planning programme, forest fire preparedness and mitigation plan – in order to maintain, manage and protect our forests from wildfires. This implies the use of a wide range of measures, programmes and policies such as creating an interface between urban and wooded areas; building forest tracks; implementing firefighting water networks or installing water tanks; or even clearing wild vegetation.
Much like prevention, preparation – mostly through learning and training – is a major challenge to support the forest-fire issue. For example, to be authorized to intervene on a wildfire field, every firefighter must first undergo an intensive specific training entirely focused on forest firefighting. To this end, the Bouches-du-Rhône County fire and rescue services have implemented the first French technical platform solely dedicated to forest firefighting. Moreover, a functional feedback is organized every year to assess and analyse the previous summer season regarding forest fires. From this learning, annual mandatory exercises are designed and programmed. They require the chain of command as well as each firefighter to train and update their skills, in order to be well-prepared for the challenges of the upcoming firefighting summer season.
IFF: Do you use risk assessment tools, like early warning tools, to identify forest risks in the region? (ANALYSTES FDF)
PB: In the Fire and Rescue Service of Bouches du Rhône, we use several tools in order to assess and forecast wildfire risk.
First we have a wildfire analysts team who monitor the situation all along the fire season. Every week they provide us with two kinds of information: the first one is a forecast bulletin dedicated to decision-makers. This bulletin is based on many weather indicators forecasted by Meteo France, on field observation of the vegetation sensibility, behaviour of previous fires, and indicates what could be the fire behaviour we could meet, area by area, forest by forest; the second one is a ground sheet dedicated to people in the field which summarizes the bulletin.
Second, during the critical days, we are able to have a wildfire analyst in our operation centre who will monitor the weather parameters, like humidity level, wind/gust, etc. to anticipate areas that meet critical conditions for ignition and spread.
In the near future we will also implement weather stations in each fire station that will be able to give us an automatic alert based on threshold set.
Last, as an early detection tool we have automatic video detection on many watchtowers that gives us an alert with the first images of the fire spread.
IFF: Technology is fundamental for preventing, monitoring but also fighting forest fires. Which equipment and innovative means do your first responders have available?
PB: The use of new technologies plays an important part in the development of fire and rescue services towards the future. The first main purpose for their implementation is to ensure public safety as well as the safety of our firefighters in the field. The second main purpose is to increase our efficiency and responsiveness to reduce potential human, environmental and material damage caused by forest fires.
In this context, the Bouches-du-Rhône County fire and rescue services have developed the use of various innovative tools and devices to assist firefighters from fire forecast to extinction.
Among them, in order to strengthen our well-tried human forest-fire monitoring system, we have equipped some of our watchtowers with 22 automatic cameras designed to detect, confirm, locate, alert and monitor forest-fire outbreaks.
On the cutting edge of new technologies, we have also acquired a fleet of six unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). They can be used to take pictures, to locate and monitor potential remaining hot spots and to estimate the size of a burnt area. In addition, to ensure aerial surveillance during the summer season, we also use a dedicated aircraft equipped with high-resolution cameras, which provides real-time images to the command post as well as to the County fire and rescue services headquarters. This aircraft has the ability to fly by night as well as during the day.
Willing to support French tech, we have more recently developed a partnership with a young French start-up called HD-Rain which allows us to access a new generation of automatic weather sensors to obtain real-time data on rain, humidity and temperature data in order to assess the risk of forest fire.
Finally, to ensure the safety of our firefighters, we have been pioneers in the design, implementation and use of fire trucks equipped with an innovative crew protection system based on a water-spray device. To this day, we are still the only French County fire and rescue services to use the same kind of crew-protection system for our off-road command vehicles as well as our fire trucks.
IFF: Citizens and local communities play a central role in forest fires. How do you involve them in the disaster management cycle?
PB: According to the French homeland security code, ‘disaster preparedness is everybody’s concern’. Indeed, citizens play a major role in the fight against forest fires. As a matter of fact, more than 90% of fire departures are induced by human activities. As a County fire and rescue service, we are part of various mitigation programmes aimed at reducing this number. Thus we help raise consciousness about the risk of forest fire among the population as well as promoting right behaviours and good practices towards it.
To help us in this endeavour, we work together with many different actors at various scales. Among them are, for instance, the civil protection reserves, composed of volunteers from local communities. They relay and underline our prevention messages towards the population directly on the field.
Moreover, the rise of new technologies have made it possible to increase citizens’ and local communities’ involvement in the disaster management cycle, using social media. During the fire season, they are widely used in order to remind people of the risk of wildfires but also to emphasize their legal obligations towards forest-fire mitigation such as vegetation clearing. Social media is an efficient tool to pass on information and avoid fake news in case of emergency. In the midst of a crisis, we may also use social media with emergency management experts in order to gather public information about the ongoing event.
IFF: In the summer season, what is your typical day like?
PB: During the summer season, a typical day for the Bouches-du-Rhône County is an average temperature of 30°C, a humidity that can drop below 10% and powerful winds such as the Mistral which is a dry north-west wind typical of the French Mediterranean region.
The combination of these various parameters puts the risk of forest fire at the core of our concerns during the entire summer season going from approximately 15 June to 15 September. During this period, we observe an average of 10 fire alerts a day. Unfortunately, with no early initial attack, adverse weather conditions and a difficult landscape, we may observe a rapid fire development with a quick progression that could reach 2.5 to 3 miles per hour.
This is why prevention and risk anticipation are the cornerstone of our firefighting strategy. Besides the prevention measures we have talked about earlier, each day of the summer season, a meteorological forecast is made in order to assess the risk of forest fire on a scale of six levels, going from low to extreme. Based on this assessment, we can adapt our preventive strategy for the following days. This way, we are able to pre-position our human and material firefighting resources in the most sensitive areas. To this end, in critical situations, up to 500 firefighters can be mobilized at once in the County for the forest fire issue alone.
IFF: What are the current major challenges regarding forest fires?
PB: Nowadays, forest-fire management faces numerous challenges. Among them, land-use planning is a highly politicized issue. In recent years, the important population growth, especially in the south of France, has caused an important increase of land pressure. This economic pressure, combined with lifestyle changes, has resulted in an agricultural land abandonment as well as an increase of the urban sprawl phenomenon. Both issues have resulted in a growing vulnerability of people and goods towards the risk of fire within forested areas.
Besides, during the past few years, we have seen a rise of environmental and ecological considerations, placing the forest at the centre stage of public opinion. Thus forest fire might no longer be the main concern in forested areas, thereby affecting their management.
In all cases, the most major challenge regarding forest fires is undoubtedly climate change. In the years to come, a raise of temperatures and an increased frequency of extreme meteorological events are expected. These should result locally in more frequent and more severe forest fires and, at a larger scale, in an extension of the forest-fire-sensitive area to the whole of France.
Persistent hotter and drier weather will likely cause a shift in the South of France vegetation with a spread of less pyro-resistant species. As such, this could lead to a vicious cycle. This is why there is a pressing need to act today in order to prevent tomorrow’s disasters.
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