The Senate publishes, Wednesday, August 3, a report on the means to be implemented to better prevent forest fires.
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Repeated heat waves and record droughts have placed the forest and the fires that devour it at the heart of the political news this summer 2022. An emergency illustrated by the data of the European Forest Fair Information System on Tuesday August 2: 47,286 hectares have already burned in France since January, with 243 fires, figures higher than the whole of 2019, the most intense of the decade, with 43,602 hectares consumed in twelve months.
Burning subject who sees, week after week, deputies, whatever their edge (LFI, RN, EELV …), question the government on the means of the fight against fires, on the state of the forest or even on the extreme drought.
Senators also seized the file. Wednesday, August 3, the Commission on regional planning and sustainable development, and that of economic affairs, adopted a “forest and vegetation fires: prevent conflagration”. At the origin of the mission of the senators, the return of experience on the fire of Gonfaron, in the Var, in August 2021, which destroyed 7,000 hectares and caused the death of two people.
“We started from this fire to study the occurrence of the” extreme fires “of forest. And the situation of this summer 2022 makes it a topical political subject,” said Pascal Martin, senator (centrist union) Seine-Maritime and Corapporteur of the Mission. The goal is to use this work to develop a bill before the end of the year. The senators also relied on the work carried out by two former deputies François-Michel Lambert (freedoms and territories) and Alain Perea (La République en Marche), as part of a “Flash information mission on fire prevention of forest and vegetation “, in December 2021.
The forest is not suitable
Senators have written seventy proposals divided into eight main axes, including “Anticipate”, “Arrange the territory”, “Manage the forest”, “Mobilize the agricultural world”, or even “reforest”. A large place has also been granted to the financing of “fire struggle up to risk”. Senators offer to increase the Civil Protection budget for the acquisition of air means, and if necessary the rental of devices. “We must play national solidarity to help the SDIS [departmental fire and rescue services] and it is up to the State to organize it,” says Pascal Martin. Three ministries (the interior, the ecological transition and agriculture) responsible for this file: this does not help to build an effective response. “There are specific to this risk in some countries, such as in Greece [civil protection] for this risk, we need better national coordination,” added the one who was, for thirty years, colonel of firefighters.
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