Over 3,500 people fled their homes over the weekend due to high fires that erupted in Bursa, Turkiye’s fourth-largest city, in the area. The city was blanketed in fog-like smoke from fires and smouldering foliage on Monday morning.
The wildfires are being fueled by record-breaking heatwaves in Turkiye and other parts of the eastern Mediterranean due to unseasonably high temperatures, dry conditions, and strong winds.
After two volunteer firefighters passed away, the number of wildfire deaths outside the city of Bursa in northwest Turkiye reached four late on Sunday.
According to news agency IHA, the pair were taken to a hospital after being pulled from a water tanker that rolled while attempting to start a forest fire. A firefighter died on Sunday after suffering a heart attack, and another worker died earlier at the scene of the accident.
10 rescue volunteers and forestry workers were killed on Wednesday in a fire in the northwestern city of Eskisehir, bringing the total number of wildfire deaths in Turkiye to 17 since late June.
In addition to the hundreds of fires that have affected the nation in the past month, Bursa is one of them. While a small number of homes have been damaged, vast areas of forest have been turned into ash while firefighting teams have managed to contain it.
Forestry Minister Ibrahim Yumakli claimed that Turkiye battled at least 44 separate fires on Sunday. The most serious fires, he said, are those in Bursa province, Karabuk in the northwest, and Kahramanmaras in the south.
Izmir and Bilecik, two western provinces, have been designated as disaster areas by the government. Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc reported that 97 people were facing charges in 33 of Turkiye’s 81 provinces in relation to the fires.
Source: Aljazeera
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