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Major Turkish forest fire spreads in tourism region
Firefighters battled to bring under control a forest fire that has spread to 10,000 hectares of land in the Turkish tourism province of Antalya, the Anatolian news agency reported on Saturday.
- Agencies
- Published: 12:27 August 2, 2008
Istanbul: Firefighters battled to bring under control a forest fire that has spread to 10,000 hectares of land in the Turkish tourism province of Antalya, the Anatolian news agency reported on Saturday.
Dozens of aircraft were sent to battle the blaze, which one official described as the worst that the region has ever faced.
Residential areas, historial site, including the ancient Greek amphitheatre in Aspendos, were in threat of being affected.
"I have dealt my whole life with fires but I have never seen a sight like this...I can safely say that we are experiencing a catastrophe," said Mustafa Kurtulmus, deputy general manager of Turkey's forestry directorate.
"Our only consolation is that there has been no loss of life. The weather conditions are very poor," he said.
A forestry directorate spokesman said the fire-fighting work continued into the early hours and that the blaze was advancing in several districts of Serik and Manavgat along the coast.
Six villages have been evacuated and four of them were seriously damaged by the fires, spurred on by heavy winds, which locals tried to fight near their homes.
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