According to their own statements, the federal police have already been fighting forest and heath fires from the air for 190 hours in the past few months. The forces supported the fire brigades in Brandenburg, North Rhine-Westphalia and Saxony with helicopters and water cannons, as the Federal Police Headquarters in Potsdam announced on Tuesday. Most missions were flown in July with 130 hours.
Helicopters with a capacity of up to 680 liters are lifted off, but also larger transport helicopters that can hold up to 2000 liters. So far, around 2.54 million liters of water have been used to fight fires in 1,519 airdrops. In July alone it was around two million liters of water.
For example, at the beginning of July, the federal police were temporarily deployed for four days with three helicopters in a forest fire in the Lieberoser Heide in southern Brandenburg. The partly high ammunition load on surfaces made the work of the forces on the ground more difficult, so that the helicopters helped from the air.
The police also flew firefighting operations against the flames in a forest fire in Sundern in North Rhine-Westphalia on July 20. A fire-fighting helicopter and four water cannons were used to support the fire brigades in the large forest fire in the Elbe-Elster district on the border with Saxony, fighting the flames with a total of more than 600,000 liters of extinguishing water.
The Federal Police’s largest support operation so far this year is still ongoing in Saxon Switzerland near Schmilka. Four helicopters are in use to support the state of Saxony. The operational area in the Elbe Sandstone Mountains is sometimes difficult to reach for the emergency services on the ground. In many areas, air support is the only way to put out the fire at all.
