December 2, 2010
The deadliest forest fire in Israel’s history breaks out in the Carmel Mountain Range near Haifa. The fire spreads rapidly, burning for four days and consuming more than 8,000 acres. The blaze kills 44 people, severely damages homes and property, consumes an estimated 5 million trees, and forces 17,000 people to evacuate their homes.
Thirty-seven of those killed are prison service officers dispatched to evacuate prisoners from the Damon Prison.
The fire begins near the Druze village of Usfiyye when a teen discards a piece of charcoal from a water pipe he was smoking. Within two hours, stoked by a hot easterly wind, the fire turns into a 105-foot-high wave of flames.
Twenty-four countries answer Israel’s immediate plea for assistance by sending aircraft, firefighters and materials to battle the blaze.
In 2012, Micha Lindenstrauss, Israel’s state comptroller submits a 500-page report on the fire to the Knesset. The report finds that the country was woefully unprepared to deal with a disaster of such magnitude with only half the necessary firefighting equipment and vehicles and a quarter of the firefighting personnel needed for a country of its size. Israel possessed only 20 tons of fire suppressant when the emergency minimum was 450 tons.
The report blames the Finance and Interior ministries for underfunding the firefighting service. Lindenstrauss says, “The failures of the Finance Ministry and the Interior Ministry and their inadequacies are significant, fundamental and severe.”
After the disaster, 18,000 volunteers contribute their time and effort to the Jewish National Fund and other organizations to help regenerate the scorched land. One week after the fire is extinguished, 21 foreign ambassadors and a representative of the Palestinian Authority plant saplings in the forest.
