Blazes Scorch Israel’s Forests

In this country’s greenest corner, much of the land is charred black.

More than three weeks of rocket attacks by Hezbollah guerrillas across the border in Lebanon have set off hundreds of fires in the forests and fields of northern Israel, turning a nature lover’s getaway into a smoke-veiled battleground for an army of overworked firefighters.

Officials estimate that the fires have destroyed half a million trees in the pine forests that blanket the hills of the northern Galilee. Thousands of acres of grasslands in the Hula Valley have also burned, ruining a key source of feed for cattle.

Crop-duster airplanes have been converted into firefighting aircraft, buzzing low to spray red-tinted flame retardant in what is often a futile battle against the wind-whipped blazes.

In populated areas such as Kiryat Shemona, the rockets have set some houses on fire and burned a toothpaste factory, although no residents have been seriously injured.

The town’s firefighters give priority to residents and homes, and have speeded to strikes in neighborhoods scores of times since the outbreak of fighting July 12.

The relentlessness of the attacks, and that they often come in clusters, means firefighters often have to juggle several calls at a time. No sooner have they raced to one blaze than the radio crackles with a fresh report.

“One day I had 22 fires at the same time,” said Danny Hanania, fire chief for northern Israel, a district that covers about 500,000 acres.

Hanania, a craggy-faced former army general who has been a firefighter for 18 years, is red-eyed from fatigue. He has been home just once -- for seven minutes, to grab fresh clothes -- in more than three weeks. But during a rare break at the Kiryat Shemona station house, Hanania insisted that he was bearing up fine.

The firehouse has adapted for the crisis. The control room, where the fire calls first come in, has been relocated to a basement bunker in case a rocket hits the building. The former control center now serves as sleeping quarters for some of the firefighters shipped in as reinforcements.

Others sleep in the corridors -- so tired, they say, that they can drop off despite the thunderous blasts from an Israeli artillery battery across the street.

Hanania’s normal force of 40 firefighters has been beefed up to 75 for each 24-hour shift. The extras include members from departments elsewhere in Israel, military reservists and cadets from the national firefighting school.

Even with the extra help, the firefighters are overwhelmed. Since the start of the conflict, Hanania said on a recent day, there have been at least 1,140 fires -- an average of about 50 a day.

Many of the blazes are minor, igniting grass next to the highway and then burning out. Others have proved stubborn. Firefighters battled the blaze at the toothpaste plant for an hour, then gave up and let it burn.

In years past, Katyusha rocket attacks mainly targeted Kiryat Shemona, the region’s biggest town. But the latest barrages are spread over a wide area, hitting outlying villages and igniting the tinder-dry Mt. Naftali and Birya forests that overlook the region.

Omri Bonneh, director of the northern region for the Jewish National Fund, which oversees Israel’s forests and employs its own firefighters, said the blazes had damaged stands of pines 50 to 60 years old. He said about 2,000 acres of woodlands had been burned -- an amount that would be normally lost to fire over five years.

“It is severe damage,” Bonneh said. “It will take a long time to rehabilitate.”

The loss is especially painful for the Galilee region, which is edged with woods and hills and coursed by small rivers that make it a magnet for hikers and ecologically minded tourists.

“This region is defined as the green lands of Israel,” Bonneh said. “That’s why it’s important for us to protect the forest and do our best to rehabilitate the forests that are destroyed.”

He said officials were already drawing up plans for restoring the forests through planting, if new trees didn’t sprout through natural growth.

For Hanania and his men, rocket strikes in wild areas are preferable to those landing in town, where the odds of injury or death are much greater, even though many residents have fled.

A new alert system sounds a siren over Kiryat Shemona whenever a rocket attack appears imminent.

No matter how accustomed the firefighters have grown to the rockets, they describe a fresh surge of worry with each new call.

“It’s a small place and everybody knows everyone,” said Doron Maloul, a 10-year veteran who has sent his wife and three children to stay in Tel Aviv. “You worry all the time that you are going to see a friend or family member who had a massive attack on the house. That’s why I pray all day that it will land in the open area.”