Fire service in France
The fire service in France is known as Sapeurs-pompiers, except in Marseille, where naval "sailor-firefighters", marins-pompiers, provide fire and rescue services.
There are two categories:
- The Paris Fire Brigade (Army) and Marseille Naval Fire Battalion (Navy) are military units providing fire protection to Paris and Marseille.
- The rest of France has civilian fire services organized, supervised and trained by the French Ministry of the Interior; specifically, they fall under the Civil Defence and Security Directorate (Direction Générale de la Sécurité Civile et de la Gestion de Crise, DGSCGC).
There are approximately 250,584 fire service personnel in France operating 15,000 emergency vehicles out of 10,238 emergency centres.
Pompier (firefighter) etymologically comes from the concept of pumping (water) and refers to the manual pumps that were originally used. Sapeur means "sapper" and refers to the first official firefighting unit created by Napoleon I which was part of the military engineering arm.
Categories
As of 1 January 2012, there were 248 300 sapeurs-pompiers in France:[1]
- 15% professionals (paid)
- 80% sapeurs-pompiers volontaires (volunteers and hourly paid)
- 5% militaires (military)
Women comprised 12% of the civil sapeurs-pompiers.
The service de santé and of effectives.
The administrative personnel, technicians and specialists numbered 10,900.
The jeunes sapeurs-pompiers (Junior fighters) and cadets numbered 27,800.
There are also few (328) civil volunteer firefighters (sapeurs-pompiers volontaires civils). The civil volunteers status was created in 2000 when the conscription was abolished. It is a national service, i.e. full-time job for 6 months to 2 years, but with a reduced pay.
Organization
Headquarters are located in:
Sous-direction des Sapeur-Pompiers
87-95 quai du docteur Dervanx
92600 Asnieres-Sur-Seine
Local organization is based in the various Departmental Fire and Rescue Services (Services Departmentaux d'Incendie et de Secours (SDIS)).
Responses
- Fires 394,000
- Car accidents 331,876
- Medical emergencies 2,212,154
- Other 788,756
Paris and Marseille comprise 14% of the national total.
See also
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Firefighting in France. |
References
External links
- (French) Official website (French Ministry of the Interior)
- (French) National federation of French firefighters
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