On October 17, 2026, a nationwide protest against the rising cost of living turned into riots in more than twenty French cities. Firefighters kept putting out fires while some of them were being attacked. The same firefighters have been on a strike notice since September 8 to demand more resources, and the riots made their equipment needs impossible to ignore.

A day of unprecedented violence

According to the French Interior Ministry, around 550,000 people demonstrated on October 17, including 110,000 in Paris. Reports published in the following days counted more than 2,300 arrests and close to a thousand injured among police, gendarmes and emergency responders.

Fires marked the day and the night that followed:

The iFRAP foundation estimates the cost of the October 17 and 18 violence at around 1.1 billion euros in its high scenario, not counting the cost of emergency response. In several cities, quick action by firefighters stopped shop fires from spreading to the apartment buildings next door.

Fire crews under attack

A workforce on strike that still answered every call

The national firefighters' union coalition filed a strike notice running from September 8 to October 20, 2026, since extended to December 4. Its demands: real funding in the 2027 budget, more career firefighters, a properly funded civil security modernization law and better personal protective equipment. On October 17, those same firefighters kept the public service running, under fire, with the equipment they had. Their September 29 slogan fits: "Des moyens, pas des miracles" (resources, not miracles). For background, see French Firefighters' Strike 2026.

The equipment gaps the riots exposed

Don't let the riots crowd out heat readiness for 2027

The 2027 finance bill provides an extra 200 million euros a year for the SDIS. Part of it may now go to repairing damage and protecting crews against violence. Yet summer 2027 will come quickly, and the 2026 season (France's most destructive wildfire in over fifty years in Gironde, close to 100,000 hectares burned nationwide) showed that heat is now a major operational risk for firefighters themselves.

Riots and wildfires look unrelated, but for the firefighter's body the risk factors are the same: full protective gear that traps heat, intense and prolonged exertion, high stress and limited hydration. Urban unrest is not an autumn-only event either: France's 2023 riots took place in late June and early July. Fighting urban fires in reinforced gear, under projectiles, during a heat wave is a realistic scenario for exertional heat stroke, a life-threatening emergency with very high survival when the victim is cooled immediately on site.

The standard is "Cool First, Transport Second" (ACSM 2023, IOC / BJSM 2021, Korey Stringer Institute). Whole-body cold water immersion cools at up to 0.35 °C per minute (Casa et al. 2007), while ice packs, ice sheets, fans or misting reach roughly 0.03 to 0.08 °C per minute (Filep et al., Medicina 2020). Only immersion reliably exceeds the 0.15 °C per minute threshold the literature considers adequate.

To be in service by June 2027, cooling equipment has to be budgeted this winter and purchased in the first quarter. The requirements after October are the same as in a forest: stable on uneven ground, able to treat more than one casualty, compact enough to ride in a support vehicle and be repositioned if the area becomes unsafe.

Kollder One™ was designed for exactly that:

Planning your 2027 heat strategy? See Kollder for fire and rescue services or request a demo and a quote.

Further Reading

Sources

Kollder is the emergency cooling tub built for stability, folds flat for transport, and fits 2 people at once.

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