Thursday, December 2, 2010

Fire in the Carmel mountain

 The biggest fire in the history of Israel is now taking place on the Carmel Mountain, where I live.
It started in late morning, now it is evening and there are many branches of the fire. 




In the lunch break we went out for a short walk in the Haifa University campus, where our lab is located, and saw the sun looking like this - a result of  the fire. 






This is another picture of the fire, taken from the Ynet site,  an Israeli Internet news site.  


The damage is huge, much of the Carmel forests have been burned, dozens of people killed, mostly those who came to evacuate other people.   Some villages and neighborhoods in nearby towns have been evacuated, and it seems that the local firefighters don't have means to control the fire, and have approached other countries for help, well - I guess the government has other priorities than to invest in firefighting equipment.    Meanwhile, where we are located it seems to be safe, but everybody is in the mercy of the wind directions...   more - later. 

2 comments:

Ronen Vaisenberg said...

Where is the first picture from? is it from your home??

Opher Etzion said...

No - from my home we did not see any fire (just in the TV). I have not taken these pictures, I think that the first picture was taken from down - near the beach looking at the ridge.