In the same period last year, more than 20,000 hectares of forest were destroyed in more than 1,630 fires nationwide, according to data collected by the Forestry General Directorate. Attending a ceremony to distribute firefighting vehicles to villages in the northern province of Karabük on Sunday, Kahveci said they are still on high alert for possible forest fires.Noting that the directorate's firefighting teams used helicopters to fight 26 fires and planes to fight 15 fires, Kahveci said: “Some of this year's fires broke out on fertile lands, in maquis shrubland and in the areas where we had planted trees last year. We engage in firefighting with more than 1,000 of firefighting vehicles, 11,000 firefighters and a team of 2,500 to deal with technical issues. The fires that broke out in İzmir, Bursa and Kocaeli were quite large. More than 200 hectares of forest were damaged in five such large fires. Some fires threatened people, since they were close to settlements. Fortunately, no one died in the fires; however, one of our helicopters crashed while collecting water from a dam, and the pilot and one of our officers died.”
Kahveci further noted that the leading causes of fires are human related, saying: “After negligence and carelessness, the fires started picnic areas are the second-biggest cause. We also take the possibility of arson into consideration. There have been some fires, the reasons for which we could not determine. We have not had to deal with any fires lasting for days this year, the longest time it took to extinguish a fire this year was 15 hours. At times we had to deal with 15 to 20 fires simultaneously, sometimes seven or eight fires broke out at the same time and such factors prevented us from fully directing all our resources to one fire.”
Explaining that while rainfall in the spring seems to be an advantage for fighting fires, Kahveci said the rainfall can also have disadvantages. Kahveci said the grass that grows due to the rainfall dries in the summer and even a small flame can lead to large fires because of the dry grass.
Upon a question from a reporter, Kahveci also stated that the directorate had prepared two planes to fight forest fires in Greece on Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's orders, adding that an organization had been formed to perform cross-border firefighting operations.
