Four firefighters die battling Spain blaze

FIRE STORM

Fire breaks out in Rwandan park of mountain gorillas
Forest fires force thousands to flee in Canada
Raging forest fires in western Canada forced some 11,000 people to spend their third night away from home Monday with thousands more poised to flee the flames, local officials said. Hundreds of firefighters backed by dozens of helicopters and air tankers battled fires in Canada's westernmost province to contain the blaze that began consuming thousands of acres at the weekend. Officials have ordered another 6,000 people to be on evacuation alert in case fires worsen in suburbs adjacent to forests, mostly in the Okanagan resort and wine-growing area in British Columbia. "Given the dry fuels and difficult steep terrain, and very hot temperatures and low relative humidity, we are taking no chances," fire information officer Jerry Wearing told AFP. "We're into an historically-high fire danger situation" especially in the southern interior, said Wearing. Weather forecasts from the Environment Canada service predict continued hot dry weather in the area, with daytime temperatures reaching 35 degrees Celsius (95 Fahrenheit). Strong winds developing late each afternoon also help spread the blazes, Wearing said. Three fires broke out Saturday in pine forests that cover the mountainsides ringing Kelowna, a city of 100,000 people about 400 kilometers (250 miles) east of Vancouver. The flames have destroyed at least three homes and scorched more than 1,400 hectares (3,460 acres) of forest, said Jenelle Turpin, an Emergency Operations Center officer in Kelowna, but there have been no reported deaths or injuries. By late Monday the fire was 40 percent contained by 133 ground firefighters aided by retardant fluids continually dropped by helicopters and "water bomber" airplanes, officials said. The cause of the fires remains unknown, but a combination of low humidity, high temperatures and strong winds have stoked the flames. Scientists have also warned of a cyclical drying trend beginning across Western North America, and of the "El Nino" climate cycle developing off the west coast of South America. "We're hoping (the fires) were not deliberately set," forestry official Rob Moore told a press briefing on Monday. The blazes are feeding memories of 2003, the worst fire season in the province in which three aerial firefighters died on duty, hundreds of homes were incinerated and damage estimated at hundreds of millions of Canadian dollars.

A fire raging in Rwanda's Volcanoes National Park since the weekend does not currently pose a threat to the world's last surviving mountain gorillas, officials told Radio Rwanda on Tuesday. "The fire is continuing but everyone has been mobilised," said Rosette Chantal Rugambwa, director of the Rwandan Office of Tourism and National Parks. She said the blaze, which has destroyed "between 100 and 200 hectares (247 to 494 acres)", has not affected tourism in the region because the gorillas are a long way from the area threatened by the fire. According to Radio Rwanda, army helicopters have been helping to contain the fire. The government-run station said the blaze, which broke out at the foot of the Muhabura volcano, was the fault of a farmer who did not properly extinguish a fire he had lit while collecting honey from a hive. Rugambwa urged park residents to take extra care when lighting fires during the dry season. There are an estimated 700 surviving mountain gorillas in the world. They live in national parks straddling the borders between Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

by Staff Writers
Madrid (AFP) July 21, 2009
Four firefighters were killed and two seriously injured Tuesday as they battled a wildfire in northeastern Spain, while several other blazes raged across the country, local officials said.

The firefighters appeared to have been surprised by a sudden change in wind direction which revived the blaze that has burned in a mountainous area of the Els Port park near Tarragona in the region of Catalonia since Monday.

"They were prepared, capable, qualified firefighters. A change in meteorological conditions caused them to lose their lives," the head of the Catalan regional government, Jose Montilla, told a news conference.

One of the injured firefighters suffered burns to 75 percent of his body while the other suffered burns to 50 percent of his body, a local government official told news radio Cadena Ser.

It was the worst tragedy in Spain involving firefighters battling a wildfire since 11 were killed in 2005 as they fought a blaze that destroyed about 13,000 hectares of pine forest near the central city of Guadalajara.

Dozens of firefighters backed by water-dropping aircraft were involved in the fight against the wind-fueled blaze which has so far ravaged over 800 hectares (1975 acres) of forest and brush.

The flames were threatening the municipality of Horta de Sant Joan, leading officials to evacuate several farmhouses in the area.

Defence Minister Carme Chacon and Environment Minister Elena Espinosa were heading to the site to monitor the battle against the fire, the government said.

Firefighters brought under control another fire raging northeast of Madrid near the town of Collado Mediano that had forced the evacuation of some 2,000 people. The evacuees were allowed to return home in the evening.

A volunteer who was helping firefighters battle that blaze was seriously injured in a fall.

Eight members of a private firefighting firm were injured when their vehicle was involved in an accident near Palencia as they made their way to a blaze.

Firefighters were also battling wildfires in the regions of Cuenca and Ciudad Real which had forced local authorities to close stretches of roads.

Temperatures soared to 41 degrees Celsius (105 degrees Fahrenheit) in parts of Spain on Tuesday and were expected to remain high for several more days although the strong winds fueling many of the fires are expected to calm.

A man died on Friday in a car that overturned in the smoke and flames in another fire in Catalonia which laid to waste 5,000 hectares of land near the village of La Donzell.

Spain lost 155,000 hectares to fire in 2005 and another 188,000 hectares in 2006 but was spared major wildfire damage in the past two years, the exception being the Canary Islands in the Atlantic which suffered major blazes in 2007.

Share This Article With Planet Earth

del.icio.us Digg Reddit

YahooMyWeb Google Facebook

Related Links
Forest and Wild Fires - News, Science and Technology

Memory Foam Mattress Review

SPACE MEDIA NETWORK PROMOTIONS
Solar Energy Solutions
Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison ...

Newsletters :: SpaceDaily :: SpaceWar :: TerraDaily :: Energy Daily
XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News

FIRE STORM

Forest fires force thousands to flee in Canada
Montreal (AFP) July 20, 2009
Raging forest fires in western Canada have forced 10,000 people to evacuate their homes with thousands more poised to flee the flames that began consuming thousands of acres at the weekend, local officials said. "Right now there are over 10,000 people who have been evacuated... and then we've got over 6,000 people on evacuation alert," said Jenelle Turpin, an Emergency Operations Center ... read more

The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2009 - SpaceDaily. AFP and UPI Wire Stories are copyright Agence France-Presse and United Press International. ESA Portal Reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement,agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by SpaceDaily on any Web page published or hosted by SpaceDaily. Privacy Statement