“it met the pressure but we feel useful”
At the Luminy scout camp, near Marseille (Bouches-du-Rhône), the forest fire protection mission begins with training: map reading, use of the walkie-talkie, vocabulary… Once ready, the young people are sent to different posts. Shirt on the back, scarf around the neck, Quentin is part of the coordination team: “We have two or three teams which are present on lookouts which warn of any outbreak of smoke and forest fires. We also have teams which are on patrol, which are mainly responsible for informing the visitors”.
Once trained, these teenagers aged 14 to 17 could help the marine firefighters of the Marseille city to monitor the creeks and its forests. Vegetation again affected by fires in early July. Significant and complementary support, assures Quartermaster Ludovic: “The advantage that the scouts will have is that already, by their number, they will be able to be posted at practically all the barriers and suddenly, help us in the event of a fire starting. They will see reports, can – be if there are people who have passed recently or not. And in a second step, they will be able to give us information in real time, if ever they have seen smoke in the creeks or fires starting.
“We can’t be stationed everywhere all day. We don’t have enough teams stationed with trucks all day.”
Quartermaster Ludovic, sailor-firefighterat franceinfo
Scouts and firefighters meet twice a week. This time, quartermaster Ludovic is in charge of the demonstration: “We’re going to see something called a porting key here.” In front of him, twenty very attentive teenagers. “I don’t think there is a single one who is over 18 and they are still deviated by the subject, by the protection of the site which is still very beautiful and by what we do too. “
Direction now the nerve center of the camp. “There, we are at the PC, so managing the teams in the field”, explains Naïs, in charge of the radio. Even on vacation, concentration is essential. If his comrades on a mission see a smoke, it is she whom they will call: “It met a little bit of pressure anyway. But it’s still super cool to have responsibilities and to feel super useful.”
And responsibilities make you mature, notes Chloé, leader, who supervises a group of young people who have come to spend two weeks. “You really feel that they are smoking things in handshe explains. Between the ages of 14 and 17, realizing this responsibility, saying to themselves ‘we are needed to monitor forest fires’, that really interests them. “ During the summer, nearly 640 scouts will follow one another on the Luminy camp.
In Marseille, scouts trained in the detection of forest fires – Report by Mathilde Ansquer
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