Frédéric Kretz is chief pilot of the Canadair service, attached to the General Directorate of Civil Security and Crisis Management (DGSCGC). It was part of the aid sent to Greece, which is still battling major forest fires.
LE FIGARO. – Under what conditions did you go to Greece?
FREDERIC KRETZ. – We left on July 18, a day after the fires broke out in Greece. They were violent and close to Athens. Greece therefore activated the European Union (EU) Civil Protection Mechanism, a request to which France responded.
We left with two Canadair. The crews were doubled each time, which represents eight pilots. Added to this was a Beechcraft 200 aircraft (a civilian aircraft, editor’s note) which was used to transport double crews and a mechanical echelon. In all, that makes 18 people: ten pilots, seven mechanics and a liaison officer.
If we are leaving, it is because France – whose fleet has 12 Canadairs – judges at the moment T that it can get rid of two planes. But we can very well be called back 12, 24 or 48 hours after our arrival in Greece, if there are urgent needs in France.
What was your mission there?
I was at the disposal of a Greek squadron, initially in the northwest of Athens. From the moment we land there, we are taken into account by a Greek liaison officer who takes care of us for transport, hotel, the start of missions, etc.
We have double crews that operate from 12:00 to 12:00. That is to say that a crew is on alert from 12 p.m. until sunset and then from sunrise to 12 p.m. the next day. Then the crews rotate: this avoids reaching our flight limitations of 8 hours per day and 60 drops. One drop is equivalent to six tons of water.
How did your mission go in practice?
We intervened from Wednesday – the day we started working – until Saturday, on the fires which were located in the region of Attica, northwest of Athens. These fires began to be brought under control from Friday, but the Greeks were expecting temperatures to rise, peaking on Sunday. So Greece made a second request to the EU Civil Protection Mechanism to make us stay until Monday morning. At that time, we intervened on the island of Rhodes from Saturday evening.
When we arrived on site, there was a fire already well established with strips of several kilometers. We dropped there until sunset. From above, we saw the flames rising five or six meters high and several hundred meters, even kilometers long. These are not necessarily exceptional fires – we have already seen some at home like in Landiras last summer -, but we know that it is something that will last a long time. What you cannot see from above because of the smoke is where the fire is moving and what are the sensitive points to protect.
Our role as a Canadair pilot is to come to the aid of firefighters on the ground according to what they want. We are also placed under the orders of the head of ground rescue operations, because he has all the information. We can’t do what we want.
All this in close collaboration with the Greeks and the other European teams…
Yes. When we are in Greece, we don’t have the sovereignty to steal and put out fires on our own. It is necessary that we fly behind a Greek plane which provides communications and which obtains the authorizations to drop. This Greek plane communicates in Greek with the firefighters on the ground and then gives us the information in English. The Greek leader plane was guiding us, and we were following his instructions. Likewise, our two French planes are not dissociated, which means that we are always at least three: one Greek plane and two French.
There were even days when we flew with two Italian and two Greek planes. We were doing six-plane flights, that is to say rotations with 36 tons of water dropped each time. This is important because a Canadair alone – which can drop six tons therefore – does almost nothing. It has to be continuous movement and back and forth.
For this to be really effective, there must be at least twenty drops per hour. If the rotations are long, it is necessary to multiply the planes. The most interesting thing for us is to have a permanent release authorization in an area where we know that the firefighters on the ground are not working. In the case of Greece, rotations ranged from five to fifteen minutes depending on the fire. There was no difficulty in bailing out (action of filling a Canadair, editor’s note) thanks to the Mediterranean Sea, even if it was necessary to do with the presence of tourist boats.
But, it sometimes happened to us to wait a quarter of an hour without being able to drop while there were flames everywhere, because we did not have the authorizations. Which can also happen in France. On this kind of fire, you have to be patient in the air because you have to know what the coordinator or the chief of the rescue operations on the ground wants.
Do Greek firefighters have the same methods as in France?
No. Their doctrine is not the same as ours, which is not the same as the Italians or the Croats… In France, we have an “armed air watch” technique. That is to say, when we have high risks in certain areas, we use aerial surveillance planes loaded with a special product dropped to delay the spread of fire. These planes attack fires as soon as they appear: an incipient fire, if taken care of within fifteen minutes, is no longer a problem.
The Greeks do not do this kind of aerial guard or attacks on incipient fires. They are waiting to be dispatched to a fire to take off and intervene. We can always argue with the Greek riders to tell them “we do it like that”, but they follow their methods.