French fire engine parading

Sapeurs-pompiers, "sapper-pumpers", are the firefighters of France, 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 Marine 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 des défense et sécurité civiles, DDSC).

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.

[edit] Categories

They are divided into four categories:

• volunteer firefighters (sapeurs-pompiers volontaires — SPV), who have another job and are paid as firefighters only during trainings and operations (part time firefighters) — 195,417
  • includes 34,797 (in 2004) in (communes) small villages fire services which are independent of the department's Fire and Rescue Service, this category should soon disappear, these sapeurs-pompiers should be integrated in the departmental service;
• professional firefighters (sapeurs-pompiers professionels — SPP) — 35,172, full-time paid firefighters.

Amongst the civil firefighters (volunteers and professional), 9,884 belong to the Emergency Medical Health Service (Service de santé et de secours médical, SSSM), as firefighter nurse or firefighter physician.

• military firefighters (sapeurs-pompiers militaires — SPM) — 9,283
  Military firefighters are directly recruited and trained by the Paris or Marseille Fire Brigades, but they maintain a military status in the same way as the United States Coast Guard is considered a military service.
  • Paris Fire Brigade (Brigade des sapeurs-pompiers de Paris, BSPP; part of the engineers of the French Army) — 7,366
  • Marseille Marine Fire Battalion (Bataillon de marins-pompiers de Marseille, BMPM; part of the French Navy) — 1,917
• There are also few (328) civil volunteer firefighters (sapeurs-pompiers volontaires civils). The civil volunteers status was created in 2000 when the conscription was suppressed. It is a national service, i.e. full-time job for 6 month to 2 years, but with a reduced pay.

[edit] 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).

[edit] Responses

• Fires 394,000
• AutoAccidents 331,876
• EMS 2,212,154
• Other 788,756

Paris and Marseille comprise 14% of the national total.

[edit] External links

• (French) Official website (French Ministry of the Interior)
• (French) National federation of French firefighters