• According to the editor-in-chief of the Gérard info media, Mike Borowski, the National Forestry Office (ONF) could have acted against the fires, if its management had not been an empty shell for six months.

  • In March, former director Bertrand Munch was removed from his post, but an interim director quickly replaced him.

  • If the management of the ONF has often been called into question, the cause of the fires is mainly linked to global warming.

The summer of 2022 is breaking records in terms of fires in France.

After the Gironde, the Aveyron and the Jura are set ablaze in turn.

This year, 'after EFFIS (the European Forest Fire Information System), more than 61,000 hectares have been burned in France.

But how to explain this phenomenon?

According to the editor-in-chief of the Gérard info media, Mike Borowski, the management of the National Forestry Office (ONF) is partly responsible for the disaster in France.

Quoting CNews, he revealed on his Twitter account on Monday that "there has been no one at the head of the National Forestry Office since March 2022".

Before adding: "Things could have been done on our forests if someone ran this institution between March and August, it would have avoided the worst".

Was the management of the NFB as empty as Mike Borowski claims?

Not really.

FAKE OFF

Last March, there was indeed a change at the head of the ONF.

In a decree published on March 31 in the Official Journal, the government announced the termination of the functions of the director general of the ONF, Bertrand Munch - in office since January 2020. The next day, the media Reporterre published an investigation with the following title: ""Management of terror": the director of the ONF is sacked".

We learn that a commission of inquiry was launched a few months earlier by the Ministry of Agriculture after several testimonies collected by a doctor revealing a “deep malaise [of the employees] linked to the personal behavior of the general manager”.

Only, Reporterre also explains that the organization is not at its first chaotic management.

Bertrand Munch's predecessor, Christian Dubreuil, would also have mistreated employees… before being kindly fired through early retirement.

An interim director

However, when Bertrand Munch left his post in March, the place of general manager was not left vacant.

In April, Deputy Managing Director Olivier Rousset becomes Acting Managing Director.

The latter is well known at the NFB, where he joined more than ten years ago.

He notably held the position of director of the territorial agency of Bourgogne-Est, before arriving at the head of the territorial agency of the Mediterranean.

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Furthermore, it cannot really be said that the risk of fire is not taken into account in the ONF's missions.

A fully-fledged agency of the ONF is dedicated to the risk of fire, it is the DFCI (Defense of forests against fire).

It is responsible for facilitating access to forest areas, while ensuring permanent access to water.

It is also this agency that implements the alert surveillance system during the summer.

“We will have to equip ourselves even more”

Above all, it is difficult to attribute all responsibility for the current fires to a single organizational management - however changing it may be.

Drought and the multiplication of heat waves encourage forest fires and are above all the consequences of global warming.

“Some trees find themselves under water stress.

They lack water, weaken and may die.

This generates more and more dry combustible mass […].

Trees cannot adapt overnight to a new climate”, explained the director of the DFCI Jean-Louis Pestour in the columns of the Express, last July.

According to the latter, forests even tend to weaken over time and climatic consequences.

“In 2010, 30% of French forests were at risk.

The projections are at 50% by 2050”, alerted Jean-Louis Pestour to the Express.

Same thing with firefighters.

“We will have to equip ourselves even more.

We can no longer speak of a fire season.

It is now the whole of the metropolitan territory which is concerned, from January 1 to December 31, up to Alsace or Franche-Comté ”, alerted Grégory Allione, the president of the National Federation of firefighters of France. , in an interview with AFP last July.

At the time, he called for an increase in air resources, but also for a better prevention policy.

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