Prime Minister Edi Rama attended today a meeting held at the Farka Air Base with members of the Fire Protection and Rescue Service, the Armed Forces, Civil Emergencies, municipal leaders and international partners, as part of preparations for the summer season and the increased risk of wildfires caused by high temperatures.

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Prime Minister Rama: Distinguished and highly respected firefighters, members of the Armed Forces, municipal and civil emergency leaders, as well as our friends from Firefighters Without Borders, thank you so much for being here with us. We appreciate it a lot. Thank you to all of you.

I would like to begin by recalling that, as we gather here in this helicopter hangar, more than 320,000 people in France and Spain had been forced to leave their homes by last night. In the past few hours alone, 55,000 residents have been evacuated from areas around Bordeaux, where the flames have reached neighborhoods on the outskirts of the city.

In Spain, 60,000 people have fled the fire in Sierra Oeste, which is being described as the worst wildfire Madrid has ever experienced in its history. In France alone, in the Gironde region, the area burned has exceeded 200,000 hectares. To put that into perspective, this is an area larger than the Municipality of Tirana. Your French and Spanish colleagues have been battling an infernal frontline for days. I am certain that you have seen the images of them, covered in soot, lying on the ground by the roadside, their heads resting on their helmets—unimaginable scenes of human sacrifice in the service of life and nature.

I am equally certain that none of you who have devoted yourselves to this profession sees them as strangers or regards those reports as distant news from abroad. What we are witnessing is the image of a shared battle, in a shared climate, during a shared summer season. When we see hundreds of thousands of people fleeing in terror, carrying whatever they can hold in their hands, it is as though we are seeing our own people, because the danger and the challenge are the same.

Therefore, with your permission, I would like from this hall to convey an expression of solidarity to all your colleagues in France and Spain.

Thanks to you, we have offered our assistance in the past, and we are ready to do so again should we be asked to provide our modest support within the framework of European civil protection cooperation. We stand ready to respond, just as we did last year, the year before and on previous occasions when our neighbors faced severe emergencies, and just as our European friends and neighbors have responded when we found ourselves in similar circumstances.

Fire knows no borders, as you know better than anyone, but neither does the solidarity of those who fight it.

Here, we have a meaningful and tangible example in our friends from Firefighters Without Borders, who have come from Canada. I would like to thank them because, thanks also to our cooperation with members of our community in Canada, we have built a strong relationship. They have spared no effort and continue to come here, to be present and to train our personnel across the municipalities.

What brings them here from Canada is precisely the same spirit that psychologically unites everyone who fights fires, wherever they may be, in Europe or on any other continent.                 Today, we are all fully aware that major wildfires are no longer an exception affecting one country or the result of one unusually bad summer. They have become a defining feature of a climate that has fundamentally changed.

What is happening in France and Spain these days does not lead us to ask whether the same thing could happen here. It leads us only to ask how prepared we are when it does happen. Naturally, the proportions may be different, but Albania is a much smaller country and cannot afford to lose a single hectare of forest. Everything we have done this year has therefore been focused precisely on preparation.

It is like a team preparing for a World Cup in the summer by training throughout the entire year. This season will be a test of everything we have sought to improve, of our efforts to achieve greater operational performance and of what we have organized in order to act as a single body.

This operation brings together different forces, from central to local government—and some of the mayors are here today—from the Armed Forces and the State Police to Civil Emergencies and, of course, the Fire Protection and Rescue Services, both at the central level and throughout the territory. This test requires preparation and as little improvisation as possible. It requires discipline, coordination and, naturally, continuous investment. That is what we have tried to provide.

A new element this year is the role of the Minister of State for Local Government, who comes from a municipal background and, in truth, from one of the most successful experiences in this field. He has served as the coordinator of all these forces.

At the same time, we now have at our disposal the greatest technological capacities we have ever had. Four helicopters are ready for immediate deployment and, whenever necessary, that number can increase to six. We have nine operational helicopters in total, although they also carry out other missions, including rescue and medical missions.

Meanwhile, we have completed the procurement procedure for three aircraft, which will arrive at the end of the year and will undergo testing by the Albanian state.

At the same time, we have also agreed on a process under which, in the event of a specific emergency, additional aircraft will be made available from the very base where the new aircraft are currently being prepared and will be made ready before they are delivered at the end of this year, now that all procedures have been completed.

Nevertheless, we know very well that the machines are not at the heart of this system, nor are the drones, which will also be used this year through a new and specialized system. At the heart of the system are the people who wear the uniform. They are the people who go into the field without asking about working hours, temperatures or the risks they face.

Behind every one of you are people waiting anxiously at home for the phone call confirming that everything has gone well. There is a mother, a wife, a father, a brother, one, two or three children who say every morning, “Be careful, stay safe,” and who, whenever they know that you are surrounded by fire, anxiously wait to hear that everything has ended safely.

I would very much like you, when you return home this evening, to tell them that we are deeply grateful to you and that an entire country thanks you in advance, knowing that you will once again be the heroes of the summer season.

At the same time, I want you to know that this is not merely gratitude expressed in words. It is gratitude and respect that we have sought—and will continue to seek—to accompany with concrete support. For this reason, we have worked every year, including this year, when firefighting capacity has increased and will continue to increase, to invest in logistics, equipment, training and coordination, so that you are increasingly prepared, professionally and down to the smallest detail.

We will therefore continue investing in the modernization of the Fire Protection and Rescue Service, in better conditions, in stronger cooperation with our partners and, of course, in salaries. This time, I have proposed to the Government that all forces under the Ministry of Defense that will be involved in this process receive an additional salary immediately, rather than only at the end of the season.

At the same time, I call on the municipalities to do the same for their own forces operating in the territory and to do so immediately, without waiting for the entire battle to end, because what follows afterwards is another matter.

Having expressed these fully deserved words of appreciation, I would also like to call on all citizens to exercise caution. We know very well that fires begin with small actions. They can start with a cigarette thrown from a car. They can begin with ashes that have not been properly extinguished after a picnic. Fires can start even when nobody intends to occur.

At the same time, we must not forget that fires may also be set deliberately, either with malicious intent or by individuals suffering from psychological disorders. For this reason, the work of the State Police is extremely important: preventive action, territorial surveillance and the use of technology to identify arsonists. This was done better last year than ever before, but we expect it to be done even more effectively this season.

In closing, I want to say that I am fully aware that words spoken from this podium are very easy to deliver, while life in a firefighter’s uniform is far harder than anything that can be expressed in words, especially when that uniform is surrounded by flames.

We have the greatest respect for that.

I sincerely hope that the season will be as calm as possible and that there will be as few emergencies as possible. At the same time, we know very well that this is difficult to predict and that everything can change within a single minute.

In every such moment, it is you who receive the first call and must set out towards the heart of the inferno. But you should know that whenever you are facing the flames, we stand beside you, grateful for and deeply admiring your sacrifice.

We are also fully aware that, for everything you do better and for everything more that you give, we, for our part, must do better and give more in return. A country is not protected only by laws or walls. A country is protected by its people. It is protected by their courage and their heart.   And if a country ever needs to see the truest embodiment of the heart that protects the life of the nation, that embodiment is the firefighter.

Thank you all very much, with deepest respect.