Tens of thousands told to flee as massive fires rage across Haifa 



Tens of thousands of people were evacuating from their homes in Haifa Thursday morning as a wave of wildfires threatened the bay metropolis, bolstered by high winds and dry conditions that have contributed to a spate of blazes across the country over the past two days.
Residents of a total of 11 neighborhoods in the city were told to leave their homes, as fires in at least five locations consumed homes and business.
“The fire is not under control; residents should quickly evacuate,” the Haifa fire chief said, according to Walla News, as eyewitnesses described firefighters having little success in checking the onslaught of the flames.


Firefighting planes from several countries were being brought in and the army’s Home Front Command called in soldiers and rescuers to aid with the effort.
In the city’s Romema neighborhood, a large apartment tower was seen going up in flames.
Houses and a kindergarten in Haifa’s Ramot Sapir neighborhood were evacuated, police said, as the city’s entire fire service tried to control a blaze threatening to spread from the surrounding forests into the suburb.
Israeli TV broadcast pictures of paramedics frantically moving elderly people out of a nursing home in the Romema neighborhood of Haifa as black smoke billowed overhead.
Firefighters also worked to try and keep flames from nearing a gas station close to the city’s Paz bridge. Route 22 running through the area was closed.


The Magen David Adom rescue service said 36 people had been treated for injuries; 35 were lightly hurt and one hospitalized in moderate conditions.
“We’re in a state of war,” Haifa fire service spokesman Uri Chibutro told Channel 2 news.
Major traffic jams were reported as residents in affected neighborhoods attempted to move to safer ground.
An Israel fire service spokesman told The Times of Israel arson was suspected in Haifa based on circumstantial evidence, but nothing had been confirmed.
Firefighters have been struggling since Tuesday to keep pace with a spate of brush fires that have popped up around the country, several of which have damaged homes and put people in the hospital for smoke inhalation.

In the West Bank settlement of Talmon, residents were also evacuated Thursday, along with 300 pupils of a local school, as flames encroached on buildings, police said.
Several cars and structures in the Ramallah-area settlement have already suffered serious damage, according to police. On Wednesday, a fire broke out between the settlement and the neighboring settlement of Dolev, though firefighters said early Thursday that the blaze had been brought under control.
In Porat, outside the coastal city of Netanya, another brush fire was reported Thursday afternoon.
A fire was also reported close to the Israel Electric Corporation’s huge coal-fired power station in coastal Hadera. Firefighters said the outbreak was under control.
On Thursday morning, firefighting airplanes from Greece and Cyprus arrived in Israel to join the effort, with more planes expected from Turkey, Croatia, Italy and Russia after Israel requested international aid.
Four planes — two Bombadiers and a Hercules from Greece and an air tractor from Cyprus — and 49 crew members arrived Thursday morning. The planes are able to carry larger amounts of fire retardant than local aircraft.

Along with the international aid, the IDF Home Front Command’s Kedem Battalion was been called in to help with the evacuations in the Mount Carmel area, an IDF spokesperson said.
In addition, firefighter reservists in the Home Front Command have also been called up to assist in battling the blazes around the country.
In 2010, the Haifa region was ravaged by a massive wildfire that spread across the Carmel forest, killing 44 people, most of them Prison Service cadets trapped on a bus after trying to evacuate inmates from a nearby prison. The fire, the deadliest natural disaster in Israel’s history, led to wide-ranging reforms in the firefighting service.
Earlier Thursday, fires broke out near the Shilat Junction at the northern entrance to Modiin, with police briefly shutting Route 443, one of two main highways connecting Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, creating a major traffic headache for morning commuters.
Firefighters managed to gain control of the fire by mid-morning.
Firefighters also battled to control blazes sweeping from the community of Neve Ilan toward Route 1, the other major artery into the capital, at the Sha’ar Hagai junction.







Education Minister Naftali Bennett said Wednesday night that a series of fire raging across the country in recent days, a number of which are believed to be arson, could only have been set by “someone who this land this does not belong to,” making a seemingly oblique reference to Arabs.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu indicated Wednesday that there were signs that some of the wildfires were deliberately set and reached out for foreign assistance to help douse the flames.

Bennett on Wednesday night took to Twitter to write that “only someone who this land does not belong to would be capable of setting fire to it,” a sentiment which seems aimed at Palestinians and/or members of Israel’s Arab community.

Bennett is head of the nationalist-religious Jewish Home party, a champion of the settlement enterprise and a strong opponent to the idea of a Palestinian state, on religious as well as security grounds. Bennett has repeatedly called for annexing parts of the West Bank and granting the Palestinians in other parts expanded autonomy, with new roads, office parks and economic opportunities, with Israel retaining overall security control.

Maj.-Gen. Amos Yaakov, commander of the Coastal District police, said Wednesday morning that police were looking into suspicions the series of fires could have been caused by nationalistically motivated arson attacks.
“When you’re battling six fronts at once, your suspicions run high, but I cannot say for sure,” he said.
Israel has faced a number of brush fires believed to have been deliberately set, including one this past May a when police released footage showing a male figure disappearing into some bushes near the Ofrit military base and Hadassah Hospital in Mount Scopus, before fleeing in the direction of the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Issawiya. The suspected attack was the third in two days in the same area and the seventh nationwide that week.

On Wednesday, firefighters brought under control wildfires in the northern communities of Zichron Yaakov and Gilon, allowing some evacuated residents to return to their homes. Police also planned to bolster security forces’s presence in the area, as suspicions grew that arson was the cause of some of the fires.

A fire in Neve Ilan near Jerusalem was still going strong as of early Thursday morning. A number of firefighting teams was dispatched to battle the blaze.

Fires also broke out on Tuesday and Wedesday near Hadera, Lachish, the Haifa suburb of Nesher, the Etzion Bloc, and outside the northern town of Kfar Vradim.