Major Wildfire in Israel

Major Wildfire in Israel

03 Dezember 2010

These 250m resolution satellite images by the MODIS instrument show the smoke plume rising from Mt. Karmel, Israel
during the mid-day hours of Friday, 3 December 2010, extending to the Mediterranean Sea South of Cyprus.
Satellite image source: NASA Terra satellite, selected by GFMC

This 1-km resolution satellite image by the MODIS instrument shows active fires
and the smoke plume rising from Mt. Karmel on 3 December 2010.
Satellite image source: NASA Terra satellite, processed by the German Aerospace Center (DLR), selected by GFMC

Fire situation map on 3 December 2010, 17:15 local time.
Source: Jerusalem Post (http://www.jpost.com/NationalNews/Article.aspx?id=197861)

Latest Updates (morning of 3 December 2010):

40 dead, thousands flee raging Israeli bushfire

The fire broke out shortly before noon on Thursday on the Carmel hill, southeast of the port city of Haifa, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described it as “a catastrophe, the likes of which we have not yet known”.

He appealed to Russia, Cyprus, Greece, Italy and other countries for help in putting out the fire and by early Friday morning, some 24 firefighting aircraft, as well as other equipment, from countries including Greece, Cyprus, France and Egypt, were mobilising for Israel or were already on their way.

The aircraft were set to go into action at first light, around 0400 GMT.

The fire swept unchecked for hours, and after about 14 hours exhausted firefighters, those from Haifa reinforced by teams from across Israel, and by soldiers, were still struggling without success to bring it under control.

Army bulldozers were clearing paths through the Carmel forest to provide access for fire trucks.

“We’ve lost control of the fire,” a spokesman for Haifa’s firefighting services was quoted as saying early Thursday evening.

Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovich said it was impossible to say when the fire could be contained.

At least 40 people were confirmed dead, their charred bodies identified as the evening wore on.

They had been prison guards who had been drafted to help evacuate 500 prisoners from a jail in the path of the flames. Reports said their bus either was trapped by a falling tree, or the driver lost control of the vehicle, and they burned to death.

The fire had been far from the road when the bus first set off, but spread about 1,500 metres in less three minutes.

In addition to the prison, residents of the villages in the vicinity of the fire were ordered to leave their homes. One village, Beit Oren, the first to be evacuated, was almost totally destroyed by the fire, reports from the scene said.

At around 1 a.m. Friday (2300 GMT Thursday) Haifa Mayor Yona Yahav gave the order to evacuate some streets of a suburb on the city’s outlying districts, close to the area of the blaze.

He said there was no immediate danger of the fire reaching the suburb, but added that “we’re not taking any chances”.

Netanyahu had said earlier in the evening that more evacuations would be ordered as necessary.

Hospitals in the region were placed on major alert.

Hopes that a major road linking Haifa with Tel Aviv in the south would act as a fire-break appeared to be unfounded.

It was unclear whether the fire was the result of an accident or whether it had been started deliberately as an act of arson.

Easterly winds, and the dry ground caused by a severe drought, helped the fire spread quickly and engulf dozens kilometres of forest, cutting off power to much of the area and sending up huge columns of smoke, which were visible on the coast, on the other side of the hill.

Huge flames sent sparks upward into the evening sky, causing one witness to remark that the Carmel hill looked like “a volcano”.

Another local resident said that while at first all she could see from her location by the sea was smoke, it later appeared as if the “entire Carmel hill was burning.”

Source: sify.com

Australia offers help over Israel fires

Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd has offered the help of Australian emergency services in tackling bushfires raging out of control in Israel.

At least 40 people have died after a fire tore through a forest near Haifa on Thursday.

Mr Rudd said in a statement Australia knew about the devastation of bushfires.

“I understand several of Israel’s neighbours are sending assistance to help tackle the fires, including aircraft,” Mr Rudd said.

“At this point, given the urgency, we understand that Israel is seeking assistance from countries in its region.

“Australia stands ready to offer assistance to Israel.”

Mr Rudd said the Australian embassy in Tel Aviv had been in touch with Israel authorities and at this stage there was no indication of any Australian injured or killed as a result of the fire.

Mr Rudd, who is currently in Bahrain, will travel to Israel later this month for an official visit.

Source: news.ninemsn.com.au

Turkey Offers To Help Israel Control Wildfire

In an effort to help Israel control its continuing blaze, which has spread through northern parts of the country, Turkey has offered to put aside its differences and sent firefighting aircraft.

European nations such as Greece, Spain and Cyprus have also offered their help. The Turkish help came a day after fires raged in the Carmel mountains, killing 40 prison wardens, who were travelling in a bus, while on their way to the Damon Prison.

The local authorities had sent the wardens to evacuate nearly 500 prisoners from the facility. The facility is located near Kibbutz Beit Oren.

The bus in which they were travelling came in way of the fast moving flames, which has now spread to narrow mountain road that links Atlit and Kibbutz Bet Oren.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman sought assistance from Europe, Jordan and the United States to help them overcome blaze.

Source: www.allheadlinenews.com

Deadly Israeli wildfire draws U.S., Los Angeles support

The Jewish National Fund (JNF) and its partner, the Friends of Israel Firefighters (FIF), are leading efforts to raise funds to supply Israels beleaguered and aging firefighting force with the equipment it needs to battle the out-of-control brushfire consuming Israels Carmel Mountains near Haifa.

The fire had taken the lives of at least 40 prison guard students, and consumed 2,500 acres as of Thursday night in Israel. It could be days or weeks before the fire is contained, experts say. Nearly all of Israels 1,550 firefighters have been called up to fight the fire, leaving cities vulnerable during Chanukah, when incidents of house fires usually rise.

JNF has set up a special fund to raise emergency cash to help Israel fight this fire.

Mark Egerman, former mayor of Beverly Hills and Western regional director of FIF, says money raised now can go to immediately purchase protective suits for firefighters and other equipment that can help them in the next few days.

This is not a question of raising money to get trucks to them in the next six months, Egerman said. This is about getting protective gear to them in the next couple days or in a week or two weeks.

Los Angeles County officials are determining whether its local repositories of fire suppressant can be sent to Israel to help fight the fire, according to County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky.

On Thursday afternoon Yaroslavsky spoke on conference call with Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren, Israeli Consul General in Los Angeles Yaakov Dayan, Congressman Howard Berman and the Los Angeles County Fire Chief P. Michael Freeman to assess what Israels needs are and how Los Angeles will be able to help.

Firefighting services can only be dispatched to foreign countries by the State Department.

While Californian cant get firefighting aircraft to Israel quickly enough to help, and countries like Cypress, Greece and Russia are sending Israel firefighting helicopters and planes, there are other needs, such as for fire retardants, which are quickly running out, Oren and Dayan told the Americans.

As of Thursday afternoon, city and county officials were checking their supplies, and the U.S. Forest Service was also being contacted to see what supplies could be made available from across the country.

Yaroslavsky said he has a sister who lives in the fire region, whom he visited there in October. She told him Thursday that she could see the glow of the fire a few ridges away from the mountain on which she lives.

Yaroslavsky said he has been following the fire on Israels Channel One and Voice of Israel, and said conditions in Carmel are quite similar to California heavily vegetated and dry mountains, leading to the sea. In addition, the erratic winds now afflicting the fire area are warm easterly winds off the Syrian desert, similar to Southern Californias Santa Anas.

But while this year Californias fire season has been tempered by rains throughout the early fall, Israel has yet to see a real rainfall this year. And Israel, which doesnt have forest fires as often as the U.S. West Coast, isnt nearly as well equipped as California, which now owns aircraft that can drop water even at night.

The Israelis do a lot of things well, because they unfortunately have a lot of practice. But this is not one of them, Yaroslavsky said. They do as well as they can given the equipment they have, but its not California or Oregon or Washington or British Columbia, where we live with this every year nine months out of the year, and were trained and equipped with state-of-the-art equipment, Yaroslavsky said.

And even with that equipment, he added, things can go terribly wrong.

Even then we have disasters on our hands, like the Station Fire last year.

JNF has scheduled a national conference call open to the public for 9 a.m. Pacific time Dec. 3, where representatives from Israels firefighting service and the Israeli and American leadership of JNF will brief callers on the situation on the ground and what supporters can do to help (call in to (800) 862-9098, conference ID 4477235).

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has also called L.A. Consul General Dayan to offer support. The consulate said it welcomes all help from friends and is working to assess what form that help might take.

The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles is also currently gathering information and raising funds to send directly to Israel. http://www.jewishla.org/israelwildfires

The American Associates of the Haifa Foundation, which raises funds to support municipal needs in Haifa, is raising funds to purchase a firetruck for immediate use, which costs around $300,000. It is also raising funds for the future rehabilitation of the forest and to aid evacuees.

Meanwhile, JNF, which has historically worked to revitalize Israels forests, and the FIF are well positioned to get immediate help where it is needed.

In addition to protective suits and gear, which cost about $2,000 each, FIF hopes to be able to purchase infrared equipment to help firefighters locate people in very thick smoke, hoses and nozzles, air tanks, and forcible entry tools.

Israels forests are generally urban forests, with villages and adjacent to large urban centers. More than 10,000 people have already been evacuated from the fire zone.

FIF was founded about 10 years ago to raise funds for municipalities in Israel, which run the local firehouses. Because cities are often cash-strapped, firefighting equipment was quickly aging, Egerman said.

In the last several years, FIF has purchased about 90 mini-pumper firefighting trucks at more than $100,000 each, according to Egerman. Those trucks were used extensively during Israels war with Hezbollah in 2006, to extinguish fires set of by rockets fired into northern Israel.

Egerman got involved with FIF soon after he retired from the Beverly Hills City Council, where he served from 1997 to 2005. Prior to that he was on Beverly Hills board of education and served as board president in 1987.

FIF became part of JNF several years ago, when JNF reached out to offer the support of its national infrastructures as FIF worked to raise funds for Israels firefighters.

Before the fire broke out, JNF in Los Angeles had already scheduled its annual breakfast for Dec. 14 with keynote speaker Amir Levy, fire chief of the Western Galileethe area now affected. The breakfast will raise funds for Israels firefighters.

Source: www.jewishjournal.com

Israel asks Russia for help with wildfires

Israels Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has asked Russia to send planes to help in combating a powerful wildfire which hit the region of Haifa and killed at least 40 people.

The disaster made the government evacuate local students, hotel guests and staff, and Palestinian prisoners of the Haifa jail. During the evacuation, a bus with the prisoners overturned and caught fire.

Source:english.ruvr.ru

Greece said it would send fire fighting planes to help Israel forest fires

Greece said it would send four Canadair fire fighting planes to help Israel bring a deadly forest fire under control near Haifa, the foreign ministry announced on Thursday.

The planes were to take off from a military airport near Athens and were due to reach Haifa at dawn on Friday, after refuelling in Rhodes, Greece’s firefighting services said.

The foreign ministry said the backup was ordered by Prime Minister Georges Papandreou after a telephone request from his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu.

Earlier reports said that a bus had burst into flames as it raced to an Israeli prison during a massive forest fire, killing dozens of prison guards participating in the rescue mission, officials said. It was one of the deadliest accidents in the nation’s history.

Fire officials said the blaze, which said about 650ha ablaze, remained out of control after nightfall.

A university, three prisons and a hospital were evacuated and at least one village was destroyed.

After nightfall, bodies of 25 victims from the bus had been identified, police said.

Fire officials said about 40 people were killed. About two dozen people were still missing, Israel Radio reported.

“This is a disaster of unprecedented proportions,” Netanyahu said.

He said the government was using all means at its disposal to contain the blaze, and he appealed to Cyprus, Italy, Russia and Greece to provide backup.

His office said Greece and Cyprus agreed to send firefighting helicopters.

Source: www.news24.com

Analysis: A tragedy that was waiting to happen

In May, the Fire and Rescue Service held a drill to simulate some of the worst scenarios drawn up by Home Front Command planners. But officials told The Jerusalem Post at the time that the exercise was largely meaningless, because the organization was underfunded, understaffed and lacking the equipment needed to tackle the kind of massive disaster scenario that materialized Thursday.

The disaster now raging across the North may well serve as a tragic wake-up call to the government and spur efforts to bring the Fire and Rescue Service into the 21st century.Too late. Tragically, too late.

As the flames engulfed Mount Carmel, the brave men of the Fire and Rescue Service continued to do battle with the fires, risking their lives in the process.

But despite their gallant efforts, the firefighters know that their organization has been systematically neglected by the government for decades.

In May, the Fire Service held a drill to simulate some of the worst scenarios drawn up by Home Front Command planners, but officials then told The Jerusalem Post that the exercise was largely meaningless because the organization is underfunded, understaffed, and lacking in equipment needed to tackle the kind of large-scale disaster scenario which materialized on Thursday.

Only 1,400 firefighters currently serve in the organization, which remains decentralized and is partially dependent on the funding of regional councils, Fire and Rescue Commissioner Shimon Romach told the Post in May.

The lack of funding has reached unbearable levels. What we have now is insufficient for peacetime. Our standards are irrelevant today, and they were barely relevant 20 years ago. In 1998, a government committee said 2,400 active firefighters were needed for adequate responses to fires during peacetime.

Twelve years later, we have half of that number.

Our vehicles are in a similar situation. And we have no reserve members to fall back on, he continued.

Unlike the Israel Police and the IDF, the Fire Service is a decentralized organization lacking a national command center and single state funding source, Romach explained.

Local councils and municipalities manage regional fire stations and have final say ontheir budgets, which are provided jointly by local authorities and the Finance Ministry.

The firefighters are often located low down on the priority ladder of local and national authorities, especially in cash-starved peripheral councils, Romach added.

The government sees us as a step-son. Our budget has been neglected for years, said Yoram Levi, the Fire Service spokesman.

Romach said isolated incidents could be dealt with using creative techniques to bypass the shortage of manpower, such as moving fire crews from one regional council to another to tackle a serious blaze, as happened on Thursday.

But in a fire as large as the one that broke out on Thursday, such techniques were grossly insufficient to deal with the crisis, while also leaving other regional councils, towns, and cities exposed should serious fires break out elsewhere.

Representatives of firefighters and the government have been holding intensive talks in an effort to solve the crisis.

The Finance Ministry has demanded structural changes as a condition for increased funding.

In 2008, the government decided to create a national firefighting authority, but that goal was far from being reached, Romach said in May.

The authority has yet to be launched, and it will be a very problematic birth. But we are trying to get there, he said.

Also on Thursday, Maariv cited sources in the Interior Ministry as slamming the Finance Ministry for transferring only NIS 100 million of NIS 500 million requested for the Fire Service this year.

Sources in the Finance Ministry responded by saying that all funds requested by the government for the Fire Service had been transferred, noting that in June the government had decided on a NIS 100 million cash injection which would be funded jointly by the Finance Ministry, Interior Ministry and local authorities.

An additional NIS 7 million had been transferred to boost the Fire Services aerial capabilities, the sources said.

Thursdays disaster may well serve as a tragic wake-up call to the government and spur efforts to bring the fire service into the 21st century.

Too late. Tragically, too late.

Source: www.jpost.com

40 dead, thousands flee raging Israeli bushfire

An estimated 13,000 people were forced to flee their homes in northern Israel Thursday and early Friday, as the worst bushfire in Israel’s history raged unchecked for 14 hours, killing 40 people and devouring everything in its path. The fire broke out shortly before noon Thursday on the Carmel hill, southeast of the port city of Haifa, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described it as “a catastrophe, the likes of which we have not yet known”.