Of the Forest fire below the Brocken summit in the Harz Mountains spread again significantly on Sunday afternoon. As the Harz district announced, at least 130 hectares are now on fire. Until about 5 p.m. there was talk of 62 hectares. The fire is not under control.
emergency declared
District Administrator Thomas Balcerowski (CDU) had already declared a disaster in the morning. “We have thus taken the burden off the shoulders of the city of Wernigerode and are now in a better position to coordinate the many different forces,” said the spokesman for the Harz district, Michael Randhahn-Schülke. The disaster continues to apply, it said early Sunday evening.
Wernigerode’s city spokeswoman Ariane Hofmann announced that the district was assuming several days of extinguishing work. The fire that broke out on Saturday is therefore still not under control. Above all, dead spruce stands burn.
Helicopters and planes are supposed to help
To According to the Harz district fire chief Kai-Uwe Lohse, five firefighting helicopters from Saxony-Anhalt and Lower Saxony are in use, including the helicopter from Magdeburg. According to the district, help also comes from a private provider’s helicopter, which takes water from the Mandelholz dam and the reserve basin on Wurmberg and brings it to the scene of the fire.
From the evening, the help from the air should be significantly expanded again. As the district further announced, two firefighting planes from Italy are on their way to Germany. They were due to arrive around 6pm, as were two other firefighting helicopters. The state command of Saxony-Anhalt of the Bundeswehr also announced in the early evening that it would send a helicopter to fight the fire. It was said that it could transport around 2,000 liters of water.
The support from the air is necessary because parts of the fire are on a 30 to 45 degree steep slope, said district fire chief Kai-Uwe Lohse. There is therefore hardly any infrastructure in the form of forest paths on site.