Wildfires

Wildfires

Northern Lebanon

An enormous wildfire erupted in the forests near the northern village of Chekka Sunday, after several other blazes broke out around the country.

Civil Defense teams spent hours battling the blaze, which broke out in Al-Shaqaa hills of the Hiri village near the Lady of Nouriyeh Marian shrine.

Earlier, another fire started in an empty lot not far from fuel reservoirs and a main shopping center in Dora, on the northern outskirts of Beirut, but Civil Defense managed to extinguish it quickly.

Washington State

Firefighters made progress Sunday battling a large wildfire that has burned thousands of acres of mountain wilderness in Washington state.

The wildfire — the largest of numerous ones burning in the West — started July 8 in Mills Canyon in Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest, which encompasses more than 4 million acres along the eastern slopes of the Cascade Range.

The fire has burned 34 square miles and is 25% contained, said Daniel O'Connor, a U.S. Forest Service spokesman at the fire command centre.

Siberia

The area of wildfires in Russia’s Siberia has increased from 20,500 hectares on Sunday to 52,300 hectares on Monday, where 158 wildfires have been registered, press service of the local forestry authority reports.

Most wildfires are registered in the Irkutsk region (51 fires at 34,200 hectares) and in the Krasnoyarsk Territory (73 fires at 17,500 hectares). Besides, wildfires were registered in Buryatiya, Tyva and in the Tomsk region.

On Sunday, 61 wildfires at 2,300 hectares were extinguished in Siberia. From the beginning of the season, the local authorities have registered 6,659 wildfires at 1.212 million hectares.

The most frequent reasons of wildfires are inaccurate handling of fire and lightning strikes.