+ A
A -
dpaCottbus, GermanyForest fires spurred on by extreme dry conditions gained ground on Tuesday in Germany’s eastern states of Brandenburg and Saxony, as well as across the border in the Czech Republic.In Brandenburg, a large state that encircles Berlin, about 8.5 square kilometres of forest and meadows - the size of almost 1,200 football pitches - was on fire.Near the village of Rehfeld, in Brandenburg’s Elbe-Elster district, 450 emergency personnel were battling the 850-hectare fire. Wind gusts of up to 60 kilometres per hour were aiding the spread.“Everything rises and falls with the weather situation,” said district spokesman Torsten Hoffgaard.Firefighting helicopters from the Bundeswehr were supporting the fire departments. A police helicopter helped with aerial surveys.The Brandenburg blaze is roughly situated between the cities of Leipzig and Cottbus.Parts of the area are contaminated with unexploded ammunition from World War II that is buried in the ground, making the situation more precarious and putting the focus on aerial fire-fighting efforts.Ground detonations had led to the discovery of new suspected munitions areas that had not yet been marked on maps, Brandenburg’s Interior Minister Michael Stübgen said.Emergency forces cannot enter such fire areas and can only extinguish them from the the air. Stübgen assumed that the complete dousing of the fire in Elbe-Elster would take weeks.Wind turbines are located in the area. Local forest fire protection officer Philipp Haase said at least one turbine is threatened.“We’re talking about a treetop fire - the fire runs from crown to crown and finds a lot of combustible material like needles,” Haase told dpa.The fire forced 300 residents of three villages to leave their homes on Monday.Further evacuations are not necessary for the time being and some people can even start returning, said the head of the administrative staff in the Elbe-Elster district, Dirk Gebhard.Another major fire was causing concern in the nearby state of Saxony.It was burning Tuesday at the mountainous and hard-to-access Saxon Switzerland National Park.The blaze erupted over the weekend across the border in the Czech Republic, at the Bohemian Switzerland National Park. Tourists have been told to get out and roads and hiking trails have been closed.On the Czech side, officials said there were more than 400 firefighters battling the flames in difficult terrain on Tuesday. On the Germany side, the number was put at 254.Czech officials put the size of their fire area at about 30 hectares and growing, while the German fire brigade has not given a number.In the Czech village of Mezna, eight buildings caught fire and were burned out completely. Almost all residents of the village of Hrensko, which is considered the gateway to the national park, had to leave their homes on Tuesday morning.In addition, the emergency forces evacuated a children’s holiday camp with about 100 participants, official said on Tuesday. On Monday, a Boy Scout camp with about 60 people was also forced to evacuate.Elsewhere in Europe, forest areas continued to burn, including in Greece, where the danger of further fires remained high on Tuesday.A forest fire in the southern part of the island of Lesbos, which was still not under control on Monday, already destroyed around 1,700 hectares of land.
