Today's Edition
BERLIN (dpa)
Firefighters in Germany were struggling to gain control of blazes in several forested areas on Sunday, as the wildfire season continued to wreak havoc on parts of the country's east, amid similar disasters in other parts in Europe.
When one smoldering area is finally extinguished, the wind lights up the next one just a few meters away, said a spokesman for the Saalfeld-Rudolstadt district office in the state of Thuringia.
Firefighters are also battling flames in an area between the states of Saxony and Brandenburg.
A state of crisis has been declared in Thuringia as firefighters were still unable to control the state's biggest wildfire in more than three decades. Winds had even brought the smell of the fires to Berlin over the weekend.
On Sunday morning, helicopters were still flying over the fire zone, using thermal imaging cameras to identify smoldering nests. By late morning, however, air support was suspended. On Saturday, three helicopters had flown over the fire zone, dumping tens of thousands of liters of water onto the burning forest.
“Our forces are exhausted,” said district administrator Marko Wolfram, hoping that emergency staff could be reduced from 500 on Sunday to 300 on Monday.
Similar numbers were battling blazes in northern Saxony, between the cities of Dresden and Leipzig, where much of the 2,800 hectares of natural landscape in the Gohrischheide area has already burned down in raging fires.
Germany's struggle with wildfires comes as Syria, Turkiye and Greece have also been battling blazes in recent days, forcing major evacuations and causing two deaths in Turkiye's Izmir province.
