Algerian firefighters continue this Thursday fighting forest fires in the north and far east of the country, amid “scenes of desolation”, the day after violent fires that killed at least 38 people and more than 200 wounded.
The balance rose to 30 dead, including 11 children in the El Tarf area, in the far east of the country, near the border with Tunisia, five in Souk Ahras, two women in Sétif and one person in Guelma, in the east, according to civil protection and local media, which also reported more than 200 injuries.
On the road to El Kala, near El Tarf, a town of 100,000 inhabitants, “a fire tornado took everything in seconds, most of the dead were surrounded while visiting an animal park,” described a local journalist.
39 fires in the country
The President of the Government, Aymen Benabderrahmane, arrived in El Tarf this Thursday morning, according to television reports. The authorities fear “new sources of fire due to strong winds.”
A total of 39 fires have devastated 14 wilayas (departments) in recent days, with several still burning on Thursday. The army and civil protection try to get around it with water bombing helicopters.
Near Souk Ahras, some 200 km away, a large fire was still raging in a mountainous area. Local media evoke scenes of panic the day before in this city of 500,000 inhabitants where 97 women and 17 newborns had to be evacuated from a hospital near a wooded area.
Television images showed residents running from their burning homes, with women carrying their children in their arms. More than 350 families had to leave their homes.
Rekindles the debate on the lack of water pumps
Authorities had leased a Russian Beriev BE 200 water bomber plane, but after responding to several fires it suffered a breakdown and will not be operational again until Saturday, Interior Minister Kamel Beldjoud said Wednesday night.
Algeria recently canceled a contract for the purchase of seven water pumps from a Spanish company, following a fight with Madrid after its reversal in favor of the Moroccan position on the Western Sahara file.
The fires of recent days have revived the debate about the lack of water pumps in sufficient numbers, which already agitated the country last year. The summer of 2021 had been the deadliest since Algeria’s independence: at least 90 people had died in the forest fires that ravaged the north of the country, where more than 100,000 hectares of scrubland had gone up in smoke.
During an Algerian-Canadian seminar on fighting forest fires, specialists had recommended last May “the establishment of a national fighting system at least equivalent to the one that existed in the 1980s,” an expert said on condition of anonymity. who participated in the discussions.
At that time, “the DTA (aerial work directorate) had 22 Grumman-type aircraft that were the pride of Algeria, especially in the fight against forest fires,” adds the expert, according to whom the aircraft “were sold at the symbolic dinar without any alternative solution being offered”.
Consequences of climate change
Every year, the north of Algeria is affected by forest fires, but this phenomenon is accentuated year after year under the effect of climate change, which increases the probability of heat waves and droughts and, by extension, of fires.
It was around 48 degrees on Wednesday in El Tarf, Guelma and Souk Ahras. Since the beginning of August, 106 fires have destroyed 800 hectares of forest and 1,800 hectares of scrubland. Algeria, the largest country in Africa, has only 4.1 million hectares of forest, with a meager reforestation rate of 1.76%.
Source: BFM TV
