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According to official information, the situation in the forest fire area in the Elbe-Elster district of Brandenburg has eased. On Saturday, the firefighters were still fighting individual embers on an area of 500 hectares that had to be extinguished, according to the administrative staff of the district.
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The forest fire in the south, not far from the Saxon border, broke out on Monday and quickly spread to around 800 hectares. The rain for Lusatia announced by the German Weather Service, which the emergency services had hoped for, did not materialize in this region.
250 firefighters extinguished the fire from the ground. They received help from the Bundeswehr, which also has a transport helicopter on standby until Sunday. He can extinguish from the air when fires flare up again.
According to the information, two armored personnel carriers are also on site, which helped to build aisles and paths to get to the burned area. The work of the firefighters is still exhausting. “Driving from fire to fire is a mammoth task, the herd is becoming smaller and smaller,” said the state’s deputy forest fire protection officer, Philipp Haase, of the German Press Agency.
Meanwhile, the civil protection organization @fire, which burned down vegetation on federal highway 183, has ended its mission. She took care of dead wood, for example, to prevent the fire from spreading to other areas.
According to the district, the Kiebitzsee in the local recreation area of the city of Falkenberg has now been released to bathers again. In the past few days, Bundeswehr fire-fighting helicopters had taken water to extinguish the fire. The lake was closed for safety reasons.
It was still unclear when the so-called major damage situation will be lifted. This makes it possible to ask emergency services from other areas for support because your own forces cannot cope with the situation on your own. In the past few days, the administrative staff of the district had said that regional emergency services and capacities were still urgently needed because the situation could not be managed with their own forces.