The Vion fire station, in the center of Toulouse, will move within two years
The Vion barracks, located in the Fer à Cheval district, left bank in Toulouse, will soon close its doors by 2024, after half a century of existence on the Charles de Fitte alleys. They were only 81 firefighters in this barracks, they will be redeployed in 5 other intervention centers in Toulouse and neighboring towns. The departmental director of the Haute-Garonne SDIS Sébastien Vergé explains to us why the barracks will close: “to enable us to improve the operational coverage of the entire metropolitan area, it will be reinforced by other rescue centers which will complete the territorial network of the metropolitan area.”
It is the largest barracks in the city center of Toulouse. It was not strategic for many interventions in the center?
It was one of the two most important barracks in the agglomeration, since you also have the Union Saint-Sauveur rescue centre, which we keep, which is actually located in the city center of Toulouse. We will soon have five centers to have a mailing closer to the population and therefore be faster for each intervention. Inside the boulevards, we will therefore still have the barracks of the Saint-Sauveur Rescue Center.
On France Bleu Occitanie the CGT of the SDIS says that the intervention times on the left bank will increase with the traffic which is dense, to arrive as far as Saint-Cyprien?
The number of rescue centers will soon be greater, and they will be better distributed over the territory, to reduce delays. Location choices are made based on field analyzes and route calculations which make it possible to better position the fire stations to be closer to the population and the risks.
In all, how many barracks will there be in Toulouse intra muros in the long term?
We will have five intramural rescue centers in the metropolitan area which will be supplemented by the already existing centers in Colomiers. A whole organization has been working with the staff to support these agents, so that it goes for the best for them.
Are there going to be recruitments in the next two years?
So we already had over the last two years 35 recruitments, therefore an increase of 8% in the number of firefighters in the department. And this year again, thanks to additional participation from the departmental council, which is one of our funders, we are going to have 10 additional professional firefighters.
This Vion barracks, which belongs to the city of Toulouse, it is located in a 12-storey building, with a swimming pool, what will become of it?
It is a building that belongs to the metropolis, which was made available to the Departmental Fire and Rescue Service. And as soon as we have left this building, it will be made available to the metropolis. I must admit that I don’t know what will become of her but this pool could become public. It dates from the creation of the Rescue Center, it was used by the staff. We haven’t done much maintenance.
An equally important word on attacks during interventions. Are they increasing in Toulouse and Haute-Garonne?
They are not increasing. But they exist, since we have on average between 30 and 35 intentions for which firefighters file a complaint, either for physical attacks or for verbal attacks, it is unfortunately far too many. For the moment, we are on this observation with actions that are compensated by the service to support agents and protect them as well as possible against this type of threat.
What types of attacks?
We are not on projectile jets. Today, we are more on intra-family violence which often degenerates with insults, aggressive people, very aggressive. Unfortunately, it also happens that firefighters are threatened by knives, by machetes. So, indeed, situations that are very traumatic for our officers.