Wildfires in northeast Algeria destroy homes, killing 34

Algerians in the fire-ravaged northeast were Thursday 27 July 2023 counting the cost of the wildfires that killed 34 people, destroyed homes and reduced vast forest areas to scorched wastelands.

The wildfires raged for days, mainly through the mountain forests of the Kabylia region on the Mediterranean coast, fanned by winds during the blistering summer heat.

ALSO READ: Wildfires kill 34, leaving people homeless in Algeria

“Many people are traumatised. Our aim is to provide moral support and psychological care,” said a member of a psychiatrist support unit sent to the disaster area.

Water and electricity remained cut off in wide areas, but aid supplies were arriving. “We need help, all the help we can get,” said a man at an aid supply point in Bejaia, 250 kilometres (150 miles) from Algiers. “We need clothes, mattresses, things like that.”

ALSO READ: Canadian wildfires blow smoke toward Norway

WILDFIRES KILLED PEOPLE TRYING TO ESCAPE

In the small village of Ait Oussalah, 16 people were killed as they tried to flee the flames, witnesses said, pointing out that they made up 10 per cent of the village population.

Tahar Chibane, 35, from the town of Ait Oussalah, lost several family members and almost all of his farmlands. “We’ve lost 99 per cent of our land and suffered great human losses,” he said at a funeral ceremony in nearby Souk el-Djemaa. “We’re still standing on our feet because of God’s protection.”

ALSO READ: SA sends hundreds of firefighters to Canada to help tackle wildfires

Djudi Zenoud, also burying a loved one, said: “How can you remain sane when so many members of your family are lost at once?” Algeria’s President Abdelmadjid Tebboune has sent his condolences to the families of those killed, among them ten soldiers trapped by flames in Bejaia province.

PEOPLE INVOLVED IN STARTING FIRES?

A judge has ordered that 12 people alleged to have been involved in starting several of the fires be held in provisional detention, the prosecutor’s office in Alger said.

ALSO READ: Climate change and the risk of extreme wildfires around Cape Town

At the height of the disaster, more than 100 fires burned across 17 provinces, said Interior Minister Brahim Merad; the fires forced the evacuation of more than 1,500 people. More than 8,000 civil defence personnel were mobilised, along with 500 fire trucks and multiple chartered aircraft.

Merad said local authorities had been instructed to assess the damage and losses and to “identify the victims in order to compensate them as soon as possible”. Northern and eastern Algeria battle forest fires every summer, but they have been exacerbated by this year’s Mediterranean heatwave.