By Judy Lash Balint
JERUSALEM, Monday, Dec 6 — Light rain and a change in the direction of the wind overnight signaled the end of the 4-day fires in the Carmel Forest.
This morning, as grey skies and cooler temperatures blanketed the country, officials announced that the foreign fire-fighting help would be heading home and pronounced the fires under control.
What remains, despite the rain, is the awful stench of the smoke and the chemicals used to fight the fires. On the human front, 33 people are still in hospital–3 in serious condition, 3 described as moderate and the remainder “lightly injured.”
Thousands of residents have returned to their homes to survey the damage. All in all, 74 structures were completely destroyed, 173 partially destroyed and 5 million trees evaporated in four days. Fiscal damage is estimated at a quarter of a billion shekel.
Experts are confident that trees will grow back and one, Prof. Ido Izhaki, a forest expert at Haifa University told the Jerusalem Post: “At this point, money should be invested in helping the residents rebuild their homes and restoring the infrastructure and not in replanting.”
Instead of wasting resources trying to do faster what nature will do on its own over the next few decades, “resources should go to protecting other areas that are prone to fires, like the Jerusalem area or the southern part of the Carmel,” Dr. Jose Gruenzweig, senior lecturer at The Robert H. Smith Institute of Plant Sciences and Genetics in Agriculture at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told the Jerusalem Post.
On the political front, Prime Minister Netanyahu exemplified solid leadership, but the state comptroller is preparing a report expected to excoriate the Fire and Rescue Service for years of neglect.
Meantime, over the past two days, more than 20 arson attempts in different areas of the country have been reported–four people have been arrested. And forty-one families are sitting shiva or observing Druse mourning rituals.
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Reprinted from Judy Lash Balint’s Jerusalem Diaries:In Tense Times.