I had a sim on vacation in France a couple days ago . . .
Yes, that is indeed the firefighter standing in the fire. He had already been there once to put out one fire from the fireplace when another one started very soon thereafter. And this is what he did.
Actually, it turned out he was stuck. I left him there for the remainder of the vacation just because I couldn't be bothered to fix him.
I showed this picture to my partner and his take on it was that the people in the foreground are so hungry that they're planning to eat the firefighter.
Really, though, it was just townies taking poor care of themselves as a result of being distracted by too many fires!