Economic crisis leaves Lebanon ill-equipped to fight worsening forest fires

One third of Lebanon’s land firefighting vehicles do not work and its three firefighting helicopters have been grounded for years

Lebanese soldiers douse wildfires in the Mechref area south of Beirut in October 2019. Lebanese firefighters say much of their equipment is unusable. EPA

Lebanon is ill-equipped to fight worsening forest fires that killed a man last week, with one third of its firefighting trucks out of service and plans to sell its only three specialised firefighting helicopters.

More than 2,200 hectares of forest have gone up in flames so far this year. At the peak of the fire season in early October, more than 150 fires spread across the country in 48 hours.

To fight the flames, the small Mediterranean country relies on civil defence’s thousands of volunteers. But one third of their firefighting trucks are out of service, said head of operations at Lebanon’s civil defence George Abou Moussa.

“We have around 205 trucks. Around 70 are out of work,” he said, attributing this mainly to a lack of maintenance.

Mr Abou Moussa declined to ask further questions about the size and capacity of civil defence's firefighting trucks, saying they were "political", without elaborating further.
He referred The National to the director general of Civil Defence, Gen Raymond Khattar. The general's media team had not answered a request for comment sent by email by the time this article was published.

Ali Daher, the head of an NGO in the southern Lebanese coastal city of Saida that backs up civil defence teams when needed, said that the chronic shortage of trucks affects volunteer work.

“Local associations and civil defence are short on many machines – like trucks and ambulances – and cannot maintain them properly,” he added.

The current economic crisis has worsened the situation.

“The lack of financial resources limits the civil defence’s ability to maintain vehicles or even to fill them with fuel,” said George Mitri, director of land and natural resources at the University of Balamand’s institute of the environment. “We see trucks arriving with only one person from civil defense. They definitely need help from local volunteers from the village.”

In an unusual move, the caretaker prime minister asked the High Relief Committee, a governmental body that intervenes in case of natural or man-made disasters, to provide funds to allow civil defence to buy 150 million Lebanese pounds worth of fuel on October 12.

That is the equivalent of $100,000 at the official, yet defunct exchange rate, or a little more than $20,000 at the black market rate. Lebanon’s civil defence is normally overseen by the Interior Ministry.

The situation is not expected to improve, warned Mr Mitri. Since the University of Balamand started monitoring fires across the country in 2008, it has noticed that they have increased in number and are destroying larger swathes of land. Global warming and longer dry seasons, which cause more droughts, are to blame.

Fires are also deadly. Last Sunday, lawyer George Kozhaya Suleiman died as he helped to extinguish a blaze in the south-eastern town of Mjaydel. Earlier this month, fires killed three people in neighbouring Syria.

Mr Daher said that volunteers fighting fires badly need additional help from the air. “It’s not just insufficient machinery that impede our work, but the lack of aircraft. Only the Lebanese army has helicopters,” he said.

The army can deploy eight helicopters at a time across the country, each carrying a bucket holding up to 700 litres of water, said a spokesperson. But several buckets fell into disrepair in the past years and have not been replaced, they said.

Firefighters used to be able to upon three Sikorsky S-70 firefighting helicopters, each with a capacity of up to 4,000 litres of water. They were bought using $13.9 million donated in 2009 by businesspeople, the Association of Lebanese Banks and university students.

But last October, as fires raged across Lebanon, killing one volunteer, it emerged that the three helicopters had been grounded for several years because of lack of maintenance. This caused widespread outrage.

Lebanese media reported in June that the government had decided to sell them.

"They claim that the maintenance is too high and they prefer to get rid of them. It's their choice, but it's unfortunate, because when you get a gift, you don't give it away," Ziad Baroud, who was interior minister at the time the helicopters were donated, told The National. Their upkeep costs $450,000 a year.

But helicopters should not be a priority, said Mr Mitri. They are dangerous to fly at night and during high winds, especially in Lebanon's rugged mountainous areas. "I'm not saying that air firefighting is useless, but we should focus on how to empower our ground crews with the right equipment and the right skills," he said.
"I highly recommend spending more money in ground fire suppression, and to buy small firefighting cars that are more convenient. They cost between $50 000 and $100,000 each. Compared to the Sikorskys, that would be an excellent investment," he said.