The Austrian Armed Forces support the fire department in Carinthia from the air with helicopters in order to successfully fight the forest fires in the region.
Yesterday, an Alouette III helicopter of the Austrian Armed Forces successfully extinguished a forest fire in Sachsenburg, Carinthia, and moved on to the next source of the fire in the municipality of Rennweg in the Tauern region, 30 kilometers away. In the morning, the helicopter crew battled the flames in difficult terrain. In the first six hours of flight, the Alouette III dropped more than 19,000 liters of extinguishing water at both locations. The aircraft had to be relieved in the afternoon.
The replacement helicopter of the same type came directly from a fire-fighting exercise in the Carinthian Marwiesen, where the joint fighting of forest fires in mountainous terrain was trained together with the Carinthian fire department’s air rescue team. An exercise quickly turned into reality.
“You can rely on our soldiers. This assistance mission in particular shows how important it is to practice difficult scenarios realistically, even with blue-light organizations. Only in this way is it possible for the emergency services to be ready at the push of a button to be able to help quickly together. Precision and team spirit are particularly important in this operation. I wish all deployed soldiers and firefighters all the best,” said Defense Minister Klaudia Tanner.
