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International News Title: Israel Says Fires Are Under Control JERUSALEM —A deadly forest fire that had raged for four days in the parched north of Israel has been brought “more or less under control,” an Israeli police official said on Sunday evening, crediting assistance from an international fleet of more than 30 firefighting aircraft and the so-called Supertanker, the world’s largest fire-extinguishing plane, which Israel rented from an American company. As dusk fell over the wooded hills of the Carmel, still smoldering in parts, range near the northern port city of Haifa, thousands of residents who were evacuated from villages in the area began returning to their homes, scores of which had been gutted by flames. Sunday was also a day of funerals across the country for many of the 41 people killed by the fire. Most of the dead were cadets training to become prison service officers whose bus got caught in the flames on Thursday as they were traveling north to help evacuate a prison threatened by the blaze. Two police officers and a 16-year-old boy from Haifa who volunteered with the fire service were killed in the same firetrap. The blaze, the worst in Israel’s history, consumed about 10,000 acres of forest and some four million trees. As the flames died down, more questions about responsibility for the disaster arose. Two brothers, aged 14 and 16, from a Druse village in the Carmel hills, appeared in court on Sunday, suspected of starting the fire through negligence. They were not identified because they are minors, and their lawyer and relatives denied they had been involved. Israel, which prides itself on self-reliance and rushes to help other countries struck by catastrophe, was ill-equipped to handle the massive fire and, in an unprecedented step, appealed early on for international assistance. The Interior Ministry, responsible for the national fire service, and the Finance Ministry, which controls the funding for the service, each blamed the other for lapses that led to the fire’s intensity and duration. The interior minister, Eli Yishai, who leads the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, an important member of the governing coalition, was harshly criticized by commentators who demanded his resignation. Mr. Yishai, who has called for a commission of inquiry, argued that he had warned about the “desperate state” of the fire service and tried to win more funding for it, to no avail. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, came in for some rare praise. The defense minister, Ehud Barak, credited Mr. Netanyahu with being “the first to understand the critical need for air support from abroad.” (The Supertanker plane began fighting the fire on Sunday morning, with nearly immediate results.) Nahum Barnea, one of Israel’s most prominent columnists and no fan of Mr. Netanyahu’s, wrote in the Yediot Aharonot newspaper on Sunday that the decision to ask for outside help “was a very smart decision, a game-changing decision,” and that Mr. Netanyahu “deserves full praise for making it.” Mr. Barnea and others noted that by displaying a demonstrative presence on the ground during the disaster, Mr. Netanyahu had learned from President George W. Bush’s mistakes in dealing with Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Mr. Netanyahu, speaking at the start of a cabinet meeting on Sunday in Tirat Carmel, a suburb of Haifa that had been threatened by the fire, said that in the past, neither the United States nor Russia had been hesitant or ashamed to request international help to subdue major wildfires. “We also did not hesitate, nor were we ashamed, in requesting such assistance,” Mr. Netanyahu said.
Poster Comment: That's to bad however the bastard state, some call israel, has demonstated what a impotent 'paper tiger' it really is.
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#1. To: Brian S (#0)
Has Nurse Ratched found a way to blame this on Obama?
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