A total of 76 forces from the Lower Austria special forest fire service are on their way to forest fire areas in the French region of Bordeaux. The first train with twelve vehicles and 27 men left on Thursday at 10 pm, another vehicle with two emergency services will follow today and 47 emergency services will be flown to the operational area on a chartered flight from Vienna Airport.
State Fire Department Commander Dietmar Fahrafellner emphasized in a brief briefing on Thursday that one of the most challenging foreign missions in history will await Austrian helpers. Germany, Greece, Poland, Romania and Sweden have also sent support to France, where massive fires are raging in several regions. The aim of the Austrian Netherlands is in the most affected department of Gironde, in the southwest of the country, specifically in the municipality of Hostens, in the administrative district of Bordeaux, where forest fires are currently around 6,000 hectares.
It is expected that the arrival time of the train, consisting mainly of vehicles against forest fires, is 30 hours. The focus of operations is mainly on fighting fires by ground units, as there are currently few or no firefighting aircraft available in Europe, the Fire Department Command state informed. Its state management team (LFÜST) was also called in to coordinate the operation and has been on a permanent basis since Thursday afternoon. Specialists in the respective subject areas support the implementation of Tulln.
The head of operations for Lower Austria’s emergency services, as was the case with the large fires around the Rax area and the foreign mission in North Macedonia, is state fire adviser Josef Huber. Preliminary deployment time was estimated at one week. Depending on the situation, however, the duration can still change. More than a thousand French firefighters are deployed in the Gironde alone and 10,000 across the country.