Carmel blaze out of control

Roy Elal

7B

6/12/10

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11916009

Written in: 4/12/10

Author: BBC

On December 2, the second day of Hanukkah, which is considered the holiday of miracles, happened an extremely tragic event. Forty-one people (37 of them were prison guards) were killed on Thursday as a huge brush fire continues to rage across the Carmel Mountains in northern Israel, killing and injuring dozens, among them prison guards and firemen. This inferno's beginning is unknown, and it managed to burn 7,000 acres (28,327,465 meters) of forest land in the first 3 minutes it started. The people who have started this (if it was intentional) are unknown, and the reasons for this unfortunate happening is so far, also unknown. Over 17,000 people have been evacuated from their homes, for safety reasons.

Once the Haifa firefighting department realized they couldn't handle the fire, they had to call all the firefighters in Israel to come help. Once they still couldn't handle it, the Israeli government asked any young person with good physical abilities to come and help. Once they still couldn't handle the fire, the Israeli government started calling other countries to come and help. Special equipment, aircrafts and crews were sent from Cyprus, Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria, Jordan, Egypt, and the UK. The US sent an expert team, firefighting supplies, and a 747 airplane (biggest aircraft in the world). Surprisingly, the Palestinian Authority also sent firefighting units to help. So far, 35 airplanes are helping! Israel's prime minister is still asking for help from Germany, Norway, Finland, the Netherlands, and Belgium. Everyone that arrived so far to help, decided together they should push the fire "from green areas to burnt areas". Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister has described this situation as an 'unprecedented disaster', meaning it is an exceptional accident as an Israeli spokesman described the saying. This definitely teaches us that not even 35 airplanes and all the firemen/women and volunteers there are in a country, plus other firemen/women plus experts, take as much as 5 days to put it out (put it out today 6/12/2010). Therefore, what we should interpret from this information is that our technology isn't as advanced and efficient as we thought! Since I am an Israeli, and I have an Israeli channel (whom shows the news, etc.) and I got a lot of information, from the news on TV, and not the website mentioned above.

I chose this situation, because, it's a terrible thing that happened in my country, and involved many other countries (which reminds of how our school is, many different cultures, and nationalities, and people from different countries help those people who are in need of help, who are from a different country!) After all of the disastrous things whom happened in this event, there was probably one benefit: this benefit was that we, as the human race, or everyone who contributed to help, realized that we need to improve our technology, or at least the ways to put out a huge forest fire. What I learned, is first, that my home country; Israel, we will have a hard time in the next couple of years, especially if a war brakes out. Another thing I learned is that our (our meaning everyone in the world) technology needs to improve, and become more advanced than it is now. The first time I heard about this, was when it went on the news. I didn't manage to complete my homework that day because I stayed up until 1 or 2 AM watching the news to see what's happening. I was pretty sad, because 41 people in my country, the were burned alive.