Negligence, not arson, appears to have caused the worst forest fire in Israel’s history, police said on Saturday as firefighters from around the world worked to quell the deadly blaze for a third consecutive day.
Authorities arrested two teenage brothers in connection with the fire, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said. He refused to provide further details, but said: “We’re talking negligence at the moment.”
CONFLICTING REPORTS
There have been conflicting reports about what sparked the fire.
Israel Radio, citing unidentified police officials, said early on Saturday that the blaze likely was started by a family that failed to extinguish a picnic fire. Israeli TV, meanwhile, has reported that kids holding a bonfire may have been the source.
The blaze, which broke out on Thursday, tore through the hilly pine Carmel Forest that clings to the mountain ridge above the northern city of Haifa, Israel’s third-largest city. It also lapped at the edges of small outlying communities.
The fire has killed 41 people — most of them prison guards whose bus was engulfed by flames as they rushed to evacuate a prison. A 16-year-old volunteer firefighter also died after joining the rescue mission.
More than 17,000 people had been evacuated from their homes before officials gave some of them the all-clear to return on Saturday. Firefighter spokesman Yoram Levy said the blaze had subsided, but added that he “can’t say it’s under control.”
Critics contrasted Israel’s helplessness in the face of a wildfire with its reputation for swift and effective responses to disasters abroad.
“We are experts in some tragedies but it seems we were not really prepared for an event related to fire,” said Hanan Goder, a spokesman for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which is helping to coordinate the international response to the fire.
UNDER-EQUIPPED
Israeli firefighters have complained for years of undersized crews, outdated equipment and minimal supplies. The country only has 1,400 firefighters, far below the worldwide average. And while it has a highly sophisticated air force, it doesn’t have a single firefighting plane. It ran out of flame retardants on the first day of the blaze, Levy said.
In the small artist community of Ein Hod, one woman desperately tried to protect her house from the encroaching flames with only a garden hose.
‘EATING UP SPRING’: Temperatures are 10oC to 15oC above the seasonal average and a city northwest of Madrid experienced its first ‘tropical’ May night on Friday Parts of Spain are experiencing their hottest May since records began, as a mass of hot, dry air blows in from Africa, bringing with it dusty skies and temperatures of more than 40°C. Spain’s state meteorological agency, Aemet, has warned of a weekend heat wave of an “extraordinary intensity,” with temperatures between 10°C and 15°C above the seasonal average and more akin to high summer than mid-May. “The early hours of 21 May have been extraordinarily hot for the time of year across a good part of the center and south of the peninsula,” Aemet said on Saturday. “In many places the
BUSINESS AS USUAL: Thousands of people were forcibly removed from their homes in the dead of night and all mentions of the incident were scrubbed from the Internet Thousands of COVID-19-negative Beijing residents were forcibly relocated to quarantine hotels overnight due to a handful of infections, as the Chinese capital begins to take more extreme control measures resembling virus-hit Shanghai. Beijing has been battling its worst outbreak since the COVID-19 pandemic started. The Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 has infected more than 1,300 since late last month, leading city restaurants, schools and tourist attractions to be closed indefinitely. China’s strategy to achieve zero COVID-19 cases includes strict border closures, lengthy quarantines, mass testing and rapid, targeted lockdowns. More than 13,000 residents of the locked-down Nanxinyuan residential compound in southeast Beijing were
‘I’M STUNNED’: The disease is not known to be sexually transmitted, but a large outbreak might reveal previously unknown transmission routes, a virologist said Scientists who have monitored numerous outbreaks of monkeypox in Africa say they are baffled by the disease’s recent spread in Europe and North America. Cases of the smallpox-related disease have previously been seen only among people with links to central and West Africa. However, in the past week, Britain, Spain, Portugal, Italy, the US, Sweden, Canada all reported infections, mostly in young men who had not previously traveled to Africa. There are about 80 confirmed cases worldwide and 50 more suspected ones, the WHO said. France, Germany, Belgium and Australia reported their first cases on Friday. “I’m stunned by this. Every day I
INTERVENTION: A source said that a border patrol agent had rushed into the school without waiting for backup and killed the teen gunman, who was behind a barricade An 18-year-old man on Tuesday opened fire at a Texas elementary school, killing at least 19 children as he went from classroom to classroom, officials said. The attacker was killed by law enforcement. The death toll also included two adults, authorities said. Texas Governor Greg Abbott said that one of the two was a teacher. The assault at Robb Elementary School in the town of Uvalde was the deadliest shooting at a US school since a man killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012. Outside the town civic center, where families were told to await news
RSS