The Romanian Army continues to support the aid missions that Romania grants to France to fight fires, and below you can see what missions the Air Force has carried out in the last few days.
Romania provides support to the French authorities for extinguishing forest fires.
Two C-17 Globemaster III aircraft, from the Multinational Strategic Transport Unit operating from the Papa Air Base in Hungary, and a C-27J Spartan aircraft of the Romanian Air Force, performed missions on Thursday, August 11, and Friday, August 12 emergency flights from Otopeni and Timișoara airports to an air base in the Bordeaux area, for the transport of some teams of Romanian rescue firefighters, together with the related equipment - 77 rescue firefighters and 17 means of intervention, which will act, in the following period, in the support of the intervention forces in France, in order to limit the spread of the forest fires that occur during this period.
C-17 Globemaster III aircraft they took off from Otopeni Airport on Thursday, August 11, around 22.00:12 p.m., and from Timișoara Airport on Friday, August 17.00, around 27:12 p.m., and the C-10.00J Spartan aircraft took off in the morning of today, August XNUMX, from Otopeni airport, made a stopover in Timișoara, from where he left around XNUMX:XNUMX a.m. for France.
The execution of the two flights with the C-17 Globemaster III aircraft was requested by the Ministry of National Defense, within the quota of flight hours allocated to Romania, as a member state of the Multinational Strategic Transport Unit.
Following the activation of the European Civil Protection Mechanism, the Department for Emergency Situations (DSU), through the General Inspectorate for Emergency Situations (IGSU), in its capacity as the national contact point, received from the Emergency Response Coordination Center of to the European Commission (ERCC), through CECIS, the request of the French authorities for the granting of international assistance, given the emergency situation generated by the spread of forest fires on the territory of the French Republic.
Romania signed in 2008, as a founding member, the Memorandum of Understanding for the establishment of the Multinational Strategic Transport Unit, together with nine other NATO countries – Bulgaria, Estonia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Slovenia, the USA and Hungary, as well as with Finland and Sweden.
️In the current context, in which several European countries are facing wildfires, the Romanian state also got involved in supporting the authorities in Greece with specialized intervention teams, at the request of the Greek government, through the European Civil Protection Mechanism.
️Also, aircraft of the Romanian Air Force intervened, in July of this year, to extinguish forest fires in the Republic of Slovenia, this being the third mission of this type, after the one in Greece (2018), and North Macedonia (2021) ).
