2023-07-28 09:57:51
Homes and vehicles burned in the village of Tighramt, Algeria, July 25, 2023. – / AFP
Thousands of hectares of forests and crops destroyed, hundreds of collapsed homes, dozens of victims without water or electricity… The material toll is heavy after the fires that ravaged north-eastern Algeria and left at least 34 dead.
According to Interior Minister Brahim Merad, 140 fires have been recorded in 17 prefectures. In addition to the human losses, the fires, mainly concentrated in the northeast, have “ravaged large areas of forest, scrub and fruit trees”, said the minister, without giving figures. Of the « instructions » were given to the local authorities to “launch the observation of damage and losses and identify the victims, in order to compensate them as soon as possible”he added.
More than 1,500 people had to be evacuated from the many villages hit by the very violent fires which devastated everything in their path: maquis and cultivated fields, houses, shops, even damaging seaside resorts. Supplies and disaster relief are beginning to be organised, while water and electricity have been cut off. Psychological cells are set up. “We need help, all the help we can get, we need clothes, mattresses, things like that”told AFP a man met at a supply point in Bejaïa, 250 km from Algiers, the area most affected by the fires that relief workers took three days to extinguish.
Read also: Heat wave: Tunisia and Algeria are suffocating, between fires and temperatures close to 50 ° C in the shade
In Aït Oussalah, near the hamlet of Toudja, sixteen people, “i.e. 10% of the inhabitants”, according to witnesses, were burned to death as they tried to flee. Tahar Chibane, 35, has lost a good part of his family: “There were sixteen deaths, including six from the Chibane family and nine from the Zenoud family. We have lost 99% of our land”he told AFP during the funeral on Wednesday, July 26, in the locality of Souk El-Dejemaa. “I can’t find the words to say the importance of a soul, the soul has no value, we are still standing but how can you stay sane when you have lost by one Suddenly seven or eight members of his family? »told AFP Djoudi Zenoud, who also came to bury a loved one.
Fourteen fires in Tunisia
An investigating judge ordered the provisional detention of twelve people for their involvement in the outbreak of forest fires in several wilayas, said Thursday a press release from the public prosecutor of the court of Sidi M’hamed, in Algiers.
At least three witnesses complained to AFP about the delays in the emergency response and a lack of resources. “The local population has played a crucial role in preventing the extension of certain outbreaks. We used plastic buckets filled from a volunteer’s truck and climbed into the forest to fight the flames.”said one of the volunteers, Mohammed Said Omal.
Every summer, the north and east of Algeria are hit by forest fires, a phenomenon which is accentuated from year to year under the effect of climate change, leading to droughts and heat waves. In August 2022, gigantic fires killed 37 people in the El Tarf region (northeast). The summer of 2021 had been the deadliest in decades: more than 90 people had died in the north, in particular in Kabylia.
Read also: Heat wave in Algeria: the unprecedented heat wave causes anxiety, exasperation and the beginning of ecological awareness
On the other side of the border, in Tunisia, damage estimates also started after fires which mainly affected wooded areas near Tabarka (north-west), sparing most inhabited areas. “The fourteen fires in seven regions have been brought under control. Between ten and twenty homes have been damaged and there is great destruction of forests, agricultural land and olive groves”, Moez Triaa, spokesperson for Civil Protection, told AFP on Thursday, stressing that the losses will exceed the 2,000 hectares destroyed the previous year. A couple opened an ecolodge in the forest above Tabarka in 2019, which burned down completely: “For us, it’s our life, the value is not the money but our commitment”Adel Selmi told AFP.
#deadly #fires #Algeria #damage #assessment #disaster #relief #begins