Albertville (France) (AFP)
Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin greeted Thursday in Albertville (Savoie) the courage of the "mountain community", bereaved since the crash of an emergency helicopter which killed five people on Tuesday evening, including two rescuers from the CRS Alpes.
"They are solid, courageous people, who get up and who are saddened. Their pain is ours", underlined Gérald Darmanin after having met the whole of the CRS Alpes detachment in Albertville, where were based the two deceased police officers. .
The accident took place Tuesday evening around 7:00 p.m. on one side of a massif located at an altitude of 1,800 meters in the town of Bonvillard, southwest of Albertville, during a helicopter hoisting exercise carried out in difficult weather conditions.
"I am in Savoie today to offer my condolences to the mountain community, to the CRS, to the SAF company and, in general, to Savoie since I know that this tragedy affects this department, this region and everything the country, "he said.
"It was only natural that I came on behalf of the President of the Republic. I am thinking of the two widows and the six children of these CRS", he added, specifying that "the nation will have the opportunity to pay homage" to the two men, who were 45 and 39 years old.
The Minister of the Interior described "two men of great value [...] who died in an exercise which aims to repeat extremely technical gestures. These are people who take extremely important risks, in an extremely professional manner to be able to intervene in the mountains save lives, ”he said.
The minister then had to go to Tournon aerodrome where SAF is based.
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