Fire officials said they had established control of the main centers of the blaze, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel no longer needed additional airborne assistance. Firefighters were able to shrink down and isolate a handful of fires to battle the flames.
Meanwhile, many of the 17,000 residents who evacuated homes in the Haifa environs began returning home."We've got it under control,'' said Mordechai Shamran, the deputy commander of the Haifa police force in an interview with Israel's Channel 2 television. "We're preventing the fire from reigniting in 98% of the places.''
Israel's worst forest fire in its history claimed 41 lives, and for the first time rendered the Jewish state dependent on foreign assistance to grapple with a national emergency. On Sunday, Palestinian firefighters and fire trucks from the West Bank cities of Jenin and Bethlehem joined the international effort
Cabinet Secretary Gideon Hauser said the caused about $74 million in damage, including 250 homes, Haaretz newspaper reported on its website. Meanwhile, news commentators called for an independent commission of inquiry to be set up to assign responsibility for the blaze.
In a Haifa, a magistrate court extended the detention of two minors from the Arab Druze village of Isfiya arrested on Saturday for negligence in starting the blaze.Israel enlisted 35 aircraft from 10 countries, including a Boeing 747 rented from the U.S., to help put out the fire. The giant smoke clouds over the lush Carmel was replaced on Sunday by a show-like procession of aircraft from Greece, Russia and Turkey.
Flying 15-minute sorties in small groups of four and two, the planes picked up salt water from the Mediterranean, then headed eastward to the mountain forest, made U-turns and then swooped low over the smoldering woods to release their payload.
The flights were punctuated occasionally by a giant shower of red flame retardant released by "Supertanker'' Boeing from Evergreen International Aviation Inc. of McMinnville, Oregon.Down below, hundreds of firefighters struggled to beat the blaze back from Israeli towns located in the forest. A group of firefighters with soot-smudged jackets said they were grateful for the assistance as they rested from four consecutive days of action.
"Today we're seeing results,'' said Haim Buniere, a firefighter with the Jewish National Fund who worked round-the-clock shifts since the blaze broke out on Thursday. "The situation is better and its more relaxed. There aren't any strong winds. It's painful to see trees you cultivated go up in flames.''
The four-day fire damaged about five million trees and 12,000 acres, some eight times the area damaged as a result of katyusha rocket hits during Israel's six-week war with Hezbollah in 2006.The southernmost front of the forest fire was centered about 10 miles south of Haifa. Dry winds whipped up blazes there that spread to an artists' village, Ein Hod, where several stone houses and studies were damaged Sunday, and the Carmel Forests luxury spa hotel.
While planes buzzed overhead, JNF forest ranger Omri Bonneh surveyed a gully with singed tree trunks and carpeted with white ash. "The spread of this fire was nothing like we have ever seen before,'' he said. "It will take many years to restore this beauty.''
