Gironde: the race against time to repair fire trucks after the megafires

It is a “war of the invisible”, as crucial as the “war of fire” of the firefighters this summer in Gironde: in a vast workshop in the north of Bordeaux, dozens of damaged, twisted, melted in places machines need to be repaired urgently before the next fire season.

Engaged in the Saumos megafire, which ravaged 42,000 hectares for ten days at the end of July, the forest fire tankers (CCF) lined up in a Gironde firefighters hangar still bear the marks of the most violent fire to have occurred in France since 1949. Here, a tank crushed by branches. There, a charred exhaust filter, melted ducts or a warped rearview mirror under the blaze.

Two months later, the 70 agents responsible for maintenance at the Departmental Fire and Rescue Service (Sdis 33) are still working on the trucks. “The fire war in the forest is over, but for us the fire war is being prepared for next year,” summarizes Marc Riflade, heavy goods vehicle workshop manager.

“Our mission is to have as many operational vehicles as possible from the start of the season, in February 2027. It’s a war of the invisible,” he says. “If we’re not here, there’s not a truck in the woods.” Of the 190 CCFs available to Sdis 33, two of them (around 400,000 euros each) burned completely during the megafire and around forty suffered damage.

Not far from there, the two charred carcasses were stored in a parking lot, their cabin blackened and the aluminum tank gutted, a sign that the heat of the flames exceeded 600°C, the melting temperature of this metal. Despite the repairs carried out since then, around thirty trucks remained immobilized in mid-September, some for disasters prior to the megafire, notes Jean-Damien Noël, commander of the Technical and Logistics Group (GTL) of the Gironde firefighters.

The vast site he manages is “strategic”, “a place of repair and maintenance in operational condition, not only for vehicles, but also for all firefighter equipment”, from helmets to boots, he argues.

During the megafire, its 150 agents switched to intensive mode, some giving up their leave: workshop trucks deployed as close as possible to the disaster, continuous supply of materials and fuel, including two to three semi-trailers of diesel per day... in addition to daily repairs for the department's barracks.

“The trucks picked up”

“During wartime, all peacetime activity continues,” says Commander Noël. Alexandre Dubois, a 20-year-old mechanic, slept very little during this period. “We took turns, we worked 12 hours each, day and night,” he says.

“Humans or machines, we pushed everything to the limit for 10 days,” explains the young man, who also intervened on the fire as a volunteer firefighter. “The trucks picked up, they were put to the test. (...) They heated up, with paints melting. The bumpers were bent. We can see that there was quite intense heat.”

Certainly, there was “a little less damage” than during the megafires of 2022, “training” for the firefighters, emphasize the mechanics. But now their time is running out: with climate change, the fire season is starting earlier and earlier and other major weather events (storms, floods, etc.) will use the same equipment this winter.

“We try to be hyper-reactive” by deploying a “war economy” in the necessary moments and by taking care of the responsiveness of suppliers, concludes Jean-Damien Noël, who hopes “to have maximum operational availability for the next fire season.”