Comptroller announces delay of Carmel fire report

Comptroller announces delay of Carmel fire report

12 December 2011

published by www.jpost.com


Israel — State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss announced Tuesday that his office would delay the release of a report on the response to the Carmel forest fires that occurred a year ago Monday.

Lindenstrauss said that the severity of allegations in the report and the potential for new responses to its findings compelled the comptroller’s office to postpone its release.

“It’s one of the largest and most detailed reports that has been published in Israel,” Lindenstrauss said. “There will be particularly interesting findings in it.”

The announcement came a day after the year commemoration of the nation’s most deadly blaze. Forty-four people were killed in the forest fire, including 37 Prisons Service cadets and their commanding officers, who died when their bus was engulfed by flames.

The fire also caused widespread damage, totaling millions of shekels, to land and property. An estimated 1.5 million trees were destroyed.

On Monday, a large monument was unveiled during a ceremony in which Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu spoke to honor the bravery of the Prisons Service cadets, firefighters and police officers who died in the blaze.

In August, Lindenstrauss told reporters while touring areas affected by the Carmel blaze that the report would be “very severe.”

He said that evidence in the document points to government negligence.
 


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