Lithuania sends 40 firefighters to battle French forest fires

LRT reported that Lithuania will send 40 State Fire and Rescue Service officials to France on Saturday to help fight forest fires. The Government approved the assistance at an extraordinary remote meeting on Friday.

The team will include a command group and 32 firefighter-rescuers. Lithuania will also send nine specialised vehicles, including five fire engines.

The firefighters are being deployed through the European Union Civil Protection Mechanism. They will travel by road with the equipment needed to fight forest fires, as well as communications equipment, personal protective gear, camping supplies and other provisions for working and living independently at the operation site. The journey is expected to take about three days.

French civil protection officials will meet the Lithuanian team on arrival and direct it to its deployment location. Some team members will set up a camp, while the others will immediately go to the assigned forest-fire site to carry out their tasks.

The National Crisis Management Centre is coordinating Lithuania’s international civil protection assistance.

According to LRT, citing BNS, French firefighters have been battling forest fires in the Gironde region for more than a week. The fires have forced 220,000 people to evacuate, destroyed more than 200 homes and affected 42,000 hectares.