Cypriot firefighters return from North Macedonia, after battling blaze for five days
Source: Cyprus Mail
The Cypriot firefighting mission to North Macedonia to respond to forest fires has been completed, leaving the best impressions for its operational excellence and is returning to Cyprus, the Director of the Forestry Department, Savvas Iezekiel, told said on Wednesday.
Regarding the assistance to Greece, he said it was scuttled as it was impossible to immediately meet the request to send manpower with firefighting equipment, as it would have taken time to transport the ground firefighters by sea and since in the meantime the fires seemed to be handled by the Greek firefighting forces, there was no real reason to do so.
Specifically, regarding the two Air Tractor AT-802 firefighting planes of the Forestry Department, with four crew and five ground support personnel, which went to North Macedonia for five days of firefighting assistance, Ezekiel said that the mission was carried out.
He added that “we had very good successes”, saying that the operational mode of action was impressive, as “we improved systems and helped the Republic of North Macedonia during the five days requested by the EU and today (14 August after noon) they are returning to Cyprus with their crews”.
He went on to say that they operated for five days in different areas, put out several fire fronts.
Asked if the fires in North Macedonia have been extinguished, he said that there are still fires, as they have broken out in beech and oak forests in which extinguishing fires is very difficult and requires too many ground forces and not aircraft
He explained that the Air Tractors are returning with their crews and will land at Paphos airport, while the supporting personnel will return later by air, on a commercial flight from Skopje via Athens or Thessaloniki.
The original article: belongs to Cyprus Mail .
