This summer, cameras will help the Aude firefighters fight fires. They will replace the old lookouts responsible for detecting the start of fires.
This is a first in the Aude. This summer, no more firefighters on lookouts. Fire monitoring continues with the help of cameras. Thirteen have already been installed, including one in Montreal, in the Aude.
“We can have precise information on a fire, up to a distance of around twenty kilometers, explains Jean-Paul Baylac, SDIS forest fire and risk prevention manager for Aude. This allows us, with all the department’s cameras, to cover the entire sensitive territory.”
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Previously, the sentries spent up to 8 hours on isolated guard, in the department’s 19 lookouts. It took three years to train an effective lookout.
A time saving for Lieutenant-Colonel Philippe Fabre, head of the operational coordination unit: “The camera allows us to immediately have the precise angle in which the optics are directed, it allows us to have a direction that is reliable, and then all that remains is to identify the distance.”
The cameras make it possible to detect fire outbreaks.
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© France 3 Occitanie
Everything is centralized at the departmental fire and rescue service in Carcassonne. So, when a fire is detected in Villedaigne that day, the firefighters quickly have very detailed information. “We can see very precisely where the starting point is. We were able earlier to see if it was to the north or to the south, explains Jean-Paul Baylac. We couldn’t have this kind of detail in the past with traditional lookouts.”
Christian Raynaud, president of the SDIS de l’Aude, is also convinced by this system: “It will operate 365 days a year, night and day. Whereas the lookouts with staff are in the summer, during the day, until 8 p.m., and then after that, it’s over.”
The equipment will have cost just under two million euros, 70% financed by the State.
