Forest fire near Haifa

[Shurik]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11901750

This is the biggest forest fire in history of Israel. Almost all the forest on western part of Mount Carmel near Haifa is on fire, small towns there are evacuated and one kibbutz in that area is almost completely burned. 40 people are dead. There's no real danger to Haifa itself, but due to heavy smoke one hospital that lies in general direction of the fire is being evacuated too.

We didn't have a serious rain here since April or something like that, everything is very dry and and the winds certainly do not help in this situation. No one has a clue when it'll stop ...

[NeonVomit]

Hope it stops soon we had similar fires in Cyprus a few years ago, it was really bad.

[browneyedgirl]

I'm sorry to hear about that, Shurik. I hope somehow it will stop. It sounds even worse than the California fires a few years ago.

[Shurik]

Greece, Bulgaria, Cyprus and a bunch of other countries, including Turkey, are sending help, firefighters and planes. No one still knows when it will be over, the main effort now is to not let the fire to come close to Haifa and other towns in the area. The smell of smoke is strong even where I live, which is more or less the farthest point in Haifa from the fire area, on the other side of Mount Carmel.

[browneyedgirl]

I hope the USA sends help because Israel is our allie/friend.

[Bathory Killcraft]

Hope the fire gets under control as soon as possible even though it is really hard to control with such strong winds and unpredictable weather. Greece had 66 dead in 2007 so can empathise with the loss in people and precious forest land. I hope no one else is hurt. Like you said, sometimes, unfortunately the only realistic way to deal with a wildfire is to just wait for it to die out - if ground troops can't reach and planes can't fly (too windy or during the night.)

[Shurik]

This is how it looks from space:


Anyway, the end of this is nowhere near, despite the international effort ...

[NeonVomit]

That's really terrible, but just be glad it's nothing like this:

[Shurik]

Is it Greece forest fires?
Anyway, after 4 days it's over, thanks to the international help. 42 people died - 40 policemen, including the commander of Haifa District police, and prison guards who were on their way to evacuate a prison in the area and 2 firefighters.
Around 50 km^2 of the forest are burned, which is around 5 million trees. ~100 houses were burned in small towns around the area.

[miditek]

Has the fire been contained as of Friday the 10th?

[Shurik]

Yeah, it was over by Monday.

[miditek]

Yeah, it was over by Monday.

I'm happy to hear that the fire was contained. I'd also heard some news reports that arson may have been involved- have any suspects been arrested?

[Shurik]

Yeah, it was over by Monday.

I'm happy to hear that the fire was contained. I'd also heard some news reports that arson may have been involved- have any suspects been arrested?

Some one was arrested, some kid who made a fire and didn't put it out when he left or something like that. Nothing criminal, just a regular human stupidity.