• Each year, the firefighters of Ille-et-Vilaine intervene on average five times to help walkers or fishermen caught by the tide in the bay of Mont-Saint-Michel.

  • The interventions are often complex because of the difficulties of access to this dangerous zone.

  • From this summer, firefighters will intervene on board a hovercraft to rescue the victims.

The scene dates back to January 18.

Having gone fishing on foot, a septuagenarian had found himself in a very bad position in Cherrueix, in the bay of Mont-Saint-Michel.

While a thick layer of fog covered the foreshore, the fisherman had lost his way and found himself silted up to mid-thigh.

Trapped, he had nevertheless managed to join the rescuers who, with the help of oyster farmers who came as reinforcements on board a tractor, had succeeded in extracting him from the mud.

“Fortunately it was ebb tide,”

an agent from the Ille-et-Vilaine departmental fire and rescue service

told 20 Minutes .

Because if the bay of Mont-Saint-Michel is majestic, it is also very dangerous.

Its crossing is indeed strewn with pitfalls with quicksand and the tide which rises, according to the legend, “at the speed of a galloping horse”.

Each year, the firefighters of Ille-et-Vilaine carry out an average of five interventions to help walkers, fishermen or sea professionals who find themselves surprised by the rising tide or lost in the bay.

The helicopter not always available to intervene

Interventions that are always complex according to Captain Olivier Oger of Sdis 35. "Access to this area, which extends over approximately 100 km² in the department, is always complicated because there paths to engage land resources", he says.

Very often, it is therefore the Civil Security helicopter based in Granville (Manche) which proves to be the most effective in bringing aid to the victims.

"But he is sometimes on other interventions or in maintenance," says Lieutenant Sébastien Cauet, head of the Dol-de-Bretagne fire and rescue center.

After reflection, the decision was therefore taken to equip the firefighters of Ille-et-Vilaine with a new "toy" to improve the effectiveness of interventions and avoid tragedies.

It is a hovercraft acquired a few days ago for an amount of 70,000 euros.

“It is a machine perfectly suited to the bay of Mont-Saint-Michel because it is amphibious and can move on water, sand or mud”, specifies Captain Oger.

Firefighters will be trained in driving it by the summer

Equipped with two engines, it will be able to carry three people on board and will allow firefighters to access “around 90% of the bay with enormous time savings”, he continues.

Before its planned commissioning by this summer, first aid workers will have to be trained in the operation of this new machine, which will be stationed at the Dol-de-Bretagne barracks.

In France, the firefighters of two other departments are already equipped with a hovercraft with the Corrèze which had opened the ball in 2020 and very recently the Vendée.

"It is complementary to all the other means that we can engage", assures Lieutenant Cauet.

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  • Society

  • Firefighters

  • reindeer

  • Relief

  • Mont Saint Michel

  • Normandy

  • Tide

  • Brittany