By Juliette Jabkhiro, Elizabeth Pineau and Corina Pons
BORDEAUX, France/MADRID, July 31 (Reuters) – Massive wildfires burning near the French city of Bordeaux and across the border in Spain are placing a huge strain on the firefighters battling on the front line, raising questions about the way fire services are organised.
More than three-quarters of firefighters in France are volunteers who take time off from a day job to respond to emergencies, while Spain is reliant on thousands of “bomberos forestales” (forest firefighters), many of whom are hired on temporary seasonal contracts by regional authorities.
Pierre-Hadrien Lusignan is a volunteer in France’s western Gironde region who has been working since last week on the fire that threatened Bordeaux, a metropolitan area that is home to around 850,000 people.
“The first 24 to 48 hours were tough. At the very beginning, the intensity of the fire made it difficult to manage,” said Lusignan, who has been a volunteer for eight years.
“The wind was shifting, and the fire was spreading unpredictably. Then reinforcements arrived – firefighters from all over France and Europe.”
Four firefighters have died in France since the start of the summer, and unions are raising the alarm about staffing shortages and crew exhaustion, with a record 116,000 hectares (286,000 acres) having burned in the country since the beginning of the year.
Two of those who lost their lives this month were based in Saint-Médard-en-Jalles, where Lusignan works as the director of a community cultural centre.
“The deaths of these two colleagues added a profound emotional and human dimension to the situation,” he said.
‘MORE VOLUNTEERS NEEDED’
Europe, the continent that is warming fastest, is suffering a torrid summer as a series of heatwaves spark deadly fires, prompting calls for an overhaul of the systems and resources available to tackle them.
According to civil defence figures, France has 256,400 firefighters, of whom about 200,000 are volunteers, with the rest made up of full-time professionals and military personnel.
“We need between 250,000 and 300,000 more volunteer firefighters,” said Bruno Menard, general secretary of the French Volunteer Firefighters’ Union. “Over the past 25 years, we have professionalised the volunteer force; they do the same work as public sector staff.”
Menard wants an increase in the compensation for volunteers, which ranges from €8.70 ($9.90) per hour for a basic firefighter to €13.11 for an officer, and more to be done to rehire former volunteers.
Interior Minister Laurent Nunez says France’s civil protection budget has nearly doubled since President Emmanuel Macron took office in 2017, rising from €450 million to €800 million. The interior ministry did not reply to a request for comment on the firefighters’ specific demands.
SEASONAL WORKERS DEPLOYED IN SPAIN
The concerns in France are echoed across the border in Spain.
A decentralised system means there is no official count of how many wildfire firefighters are employed, with each region recruiting independently.
Spain’s two largest trade unions, CCOO and UGT, estimate there are around 35,000 wildfire firefighters nationwide, most of whom work on temporary six-month contracts. Staffing rises to roughly 40,000 during the peak summer fire season, when auxiliary crews are hired.
Jorge Nieto, a CCOO representative and coordinator of forestry and environmental officers in the Castile-Leon region north of Madrid, says the set-up is not sustainable.
“Forest firefighters in this region are the worst paid in Spain. These are people risking their lives for little more than the minimum wage. Most earn no more than €1,400 a month,” he said.
“What is needed is a professional workforce with decent working conditions.”
PREVENTION WORK SHOULD BE YEAR-ROUND
In Madrid, around 60 public-sector firefighters have been on strike for more than 1,170 days, seeking official recognition of their status and rights as wildfire firefighters.
After national authorities took charge of firefighting operations, they were formally deployed alongside other crews to tackle the wave of fires.
Spanish firefighters and union representatives argue that workers should be employed all year round, carrying out forest management and prevention work during the winter, including clearing vegetation and maintaining firebreaks around towns and farms in sparsely populated rural areas, which could help reduce the scale and intensity of increasingly destructive wildfires.
“The vegetation-clearing and prevention work that could be assigned to wildfire firefighters during periods of lower fire risk simply isn’t being done,” said Carlos Cuenca, a firefighter in Madrid and member of a specialised national emergency unit.
Spain’s environment minister, Sara Aagesen, said more money was being made available.
“Between 2024 and 2026, the government increased funding for wildfires by 30% for prevention and 34% for firefighting operations,” she said.
“We have also strengthened our specialised wildfire brigades by increasing their budget by 47% and improving their working conditions. We will continue along that path.”
Regions are also acting.
By the end of this year, the majority of ground crews, 71 of 111 forest firefighter teams employed by the public company TRAGSA, will be operational 12 months a year and carry out prevention activities, including brush clearing, thinning, pruning and roadside vegetation clearing, the regional mnvironment ministry of the Castile-Leon government told Reuters.
Jose Antonio Garcia Abarca, a firefighter in the Madrid region, said the wildfire there was a new phenomenon as it threatened to encroach on more built-up areas.
“It’s heartbreaking to drive through places you’ve known all your life and see the devastation,” he said. “But we have to keep going. We’re still in the wildfire season and there’s still work to do.”($1 = 0.8781 euros)
(Addiitonal reporting by David Latona, Emma Pinedo, Michael Gore, Violeta Santos Moura and Antoine Demaison; Writing by Keith Weir; Editing by Alex Richardson)
