The fire service in France is known as Sapeurs-pompiers, 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.
Read more about Fire Service In France: Categories, Organization, Responses
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