Devastating forest fire

Italy urgently needs extinguishing water from Carinthia

Flame inferno near the Austrian border in the province of Udine: after a lightning strike, a forest fire on Mount Cimador got completely out of control. Now the Italian authorities are asking Carinthia for help - they need extinguishing water from Lake Weissensee.

"We are working on activating the cross-border protocol with Austria so that the water to fight the fire comes from Lake Weissensee and not from the more distant Adriatic Sea," says Riccardo Riccardi, the civil protection officer for the Friuli Venezia Giulia region. The fire had already broken out on August 19 due to a lightning strike, and the civil protection was also able to temporarily keep the fire under control with the use of helicopters.

Flame inferno on the Italian mountain Cimadors near the Carinthian border.(Bild: zVg)

However, due to the high temperatures and strong winds, the fire has now spread further in recent days. Even three helicopters and two fire-fighting planes were unable to do anything about it. No less than 300 hectares of forest have already been destroyed, around a dozen residents have had to leave their homes - and the fire is now officially "out of control". "The next rainfall is not forecast until Thursday - we can't wait that long," reports Riccardi.

No official request yet
And so the extinguishing water from Lake Weissensee is now urgently needed. However, no official request has yet been received from the Italian authorities. If the worst comes to the worst, however, the area of Lake Weissensee used by the Canadair firefighting aircraft as a holding area would be cordoned off by boats after consultation with the district authority.