With its imposing rust-colored metal structures rising up towards the Provence sky, one would swear it was a contemporary art installation. But the ballet of an “HBE” – for “water bomber helicopter” – contradicts this first impression. The device shaves the tops of these steel trees, dumps its cargo of hectoliters there and returns to draw a new cargo from a basin.
Sweaty young firefighters take off their helmets, then their fireproof balaclavas, and walk away. In firefighter jargon, they “appropriate the notion of heat”, as close as possible to the conditions they will encounter throughout their career. The departmental training center of Velaux, 35 kilometers north of Marseille and headquarters of the fire school base, is, assures an officer, “a unique place in Europe, perhaps in the world”. Twenty-three structures reproducing the silhouette of trees are equipped with gas-powered burners, which make it possible to simulate real conflagration conditions and accustom firefighters to working in an environment degraded by extreme heat.
Orlane, 18, has just undergone her first training session there, again “Impressed by the extent of thermal phenomena and what one feels when in contact with fire”. The young woman joined the school for young firefighters in Salon-de-Provence at the age of 12, without any particular family tropism, unlike many of her comrades, whose vocation is often determined by the example of relatives – fathers, brothers or cousins and, increasingly, mothers or sisters.
Practical and theoretical training
Orlane wants to continue volunteering, but is not yet considering a professional career – “perhaps at the end of my studies, a DUT in hygiene, safety, environment”. In the meantime, she will have to experience the “MAF” event, another great classic at the Velaux site. This “house with fires” spreads out over five floors and a basement its corridors and its blind spots punctuated by eight “fire points” which make it possible to reconstruct the difficult conditions of intervention in a closed environment, saturated with smoke, and to attack a fire in the process of devouring an apartment building or an industrial premises.
Volunteer or professional firefighters, officers and non-commissioned officers, agents and administrative staff: like her, each year, around 10,000 trainees follow a good thousand practical and theoretical training sessions at the training center, attend lectures given in the one of the fifteen classrooms or the 155-seat amphitheater, try their hand at commanding the “columns”, these caravans of trucks engaged against forest fires. Forty vehicles are dedicated to training there, supplemented by an observation tower, an approved driving school track and driving simulators.
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