An extensive fire broke out Sunday in the forest between Kibbutz Ramat Rahel and Jerusalem's Armon Hanatziv neighborhood. Eight teams of firefighters were called to the scene. By the time the fire was extinguished, some 2.5 acres of natural woodland had been burned.
Also Sunday, fires broke out near the Gilo neighborhood and Beit Safafa.
The largest fire (Photo: Noam Moskowitz)
The fires became a baptism of fire for Jerusalem's firefighting chief. Captain Shmulik Friedman took up his post just a week ago, and on Sunday morning he was already calling up his teams. "The wind and sun didn't make life easy for the firefighters," he said to Ynet.
At a certain stage, the firefighters asked residents to leave their homes.
Friedman had to deal with four separate blazes. "It was a real test of fire for me," he said, and expressed his relief that all had ended "with no casualties and with minimum damage to nature."