Rome: After a gruelling summer skimming lakes and coastlines to dump thousands of tonnes of water on wildfires across a parched Europe, Italy's fleet of bright yellow and red Canadair planes has finally returned home to a base near Rome for maintenance.
Italy operates one of the world's largest fleets of Canadair amphibious aircraft -- part boat, part plane -- that can respond quickly to a fire because they do not need to land to take on water from lakes, reservoirs or the sea.
This summer brought Italy's fourth-largest fire season since 2006, with 113,800 hectares burned in 645 fires, according to data from the European EFFIS system, keeping the country's 18 water bombers busy.
But the planes were called to tackle wild blazes abroad too, as part of the European Union's shared firefighting resources, with the continent battling a historic fire season.
"At the start of the summer, we deployed to Portugal and Spain, where we faced two quite difficult situations," said Francesco Morgante, a pilot with Avincis, the company that manages the fleet on behalf of Italy's fire service.
Both countries saw devastating fires, threatening cities and tourist hotspots.
"After that, our own country required our full attention, particularly due to the emergency situation in northern Italy, which was quite unexpected and unusual this year," the 58-year-old Morgante told AFP.
The Canadair water bombers are manufactured exclusively by Calgary-based De Havilland.
Italy has the CL-415 model, but like many European countries is awaiting delivery of new-generation aircraft, the DHC-515, which comes with a price tag of around 100 million euros ($113 million).
