The fire department reports that the situation is critical. On Wednesday evening, the fire brigade is still busy extinguishing the Rax Mountains. They have been fighting the forest fire since Monday. As the fire brigade announced, the fire broke out on the Mittagstein at the beginning of the week. First, a ground squad tried to contain the flames with fire blankets. Due to dangerous falling rocks and falling, burning rhizomes, the action had to be stopped first, reports the Austrian media. A forest worker was injured.
The fire is now under control. According to the fire brigade, 115 hectares of forest area were burned. Residential areas should not be endangered. “This is a dimension that we only know from television and now it affects us,” said the head of the forest administration to the newspaper “Die Presse”.
However, it is not the biggest forest fire. According to data from the forest fire statistics of the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna, around 200 hectares in Tyrol were destroyed in 1947.
Extinguishing work could still take days
The extinguishing work on the Rax has already been going on for three days. The fact that the fire has spread on a slope further complicates the work. The weather forecast also worries the emergency services. It hasn’t rained very much lately, and the forest is accordingly dry. Strong winds also fan the flames over and over again. And there is no rain in sight in the coming days either. For this, more winds are predicted. This threatens a jet effect that could rekindle the flames and intensify the fire.
In order to prevent their spread, the fire brigade had to cut aisles. Nevertheless, the extinguishing work will still take days, said fire department head of operations Josef Huber.
Sources: ORF, “The standard“,”The press“