CYPRUS was last night prepping its fire-fighting forces to assist Israel in combating a huge blaze sweeping through the north of the neighbouring country, which killed 40 people trapped in a bus.
A police chopper capable of night flight was being readied to head out to Israel, while a firefighting plane of the Forestry Department would be taking off at daybreak today if still needed, officials said.
Initial unconfirmed reports said up to 40 people had died as a result of the forest fire, many of them prison guards who were trapped in a bus trying to flee the flames. Israeli media said the fire started around midday, possibly in an illegal dumping ground in the Carmel Hills, near the city of Haifa.
The official request for assistance was made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who spoke with President Demetris Christofias on the phone in the late afternoon.
“It’s a disaster on a scale that we have never seen before,” Netanyahu was earlier quoted as saying, adding that Israel had called on Greece, Cyprus, Italy and Russia to help tackle the inferno.
Interior Minister Neoclis Sylikiotis told the Mail he was in contact with the secretary of Israel’s National Security Council.
Meanwhile the Fire Department here, also in contact with its counterpart agency in Israel, was put on full alert.
“We have offered them [the Israelis] all the assistance we can give…we’re waiting for them to let us know just what they need,” said Fire Department spokesman Leonidas Leonidou.
He said the Fire Department could send up to six small-sized mobile firefighting units backed up by 50 personnel.
These would need to be loaded onto a military transport aircraft such as a C-130, which the Israelis would presumably dispatch to the island if still needed by morning, said Leonidou.
“What they really need right away is aircraft,” he said.
The police chopper can be outfitted to carry up to one tonne of water.
The Forestry Department has a fleet of two dedicated firefighting aircraft, but one of them is currently in Spain undergoing maintenance.
The other available aircraft was being outfitted and would be ready to fly out to Israel at dawn today, Agriculture Minister Demetris Eliades said. This aircraft, the smaller of the two, can only make one drop at a time.
Reports from Israel said at least 2,000 people were evacuated from local towns and villages as the flames leapt through the dense, pine woodland, fanned by strong winds off the Mediterranean sea.
A collective farm, Kibbutz Beit Oren, was razed to the ground and television showed pictures of a bus and car, which had been carrying prison guards and rescuers when they were engulfed by the flames. Both vehicles were gutted.
Israeli media said it was the biggest forest fire in the country’s history, with some 2,800hectares) of land destroyed.
