Major Wildfire halts rail traffic along Italy's Adriatic coast
Pastor Dale Morgan
Major Wildfire halts rail traffic along Italy's Adriatic coast*
ROME, July 10 (AFP) Jul 10, 2007
A major fire along eight kilometres (five miles) of Italy's Adriatic
coast on the Rome-Ancona rail route has halted several trains, the civil
protection services announced Tuesday.
Firefighters and forest rangers backed up by specially equipped
helicopters and a Canadair firefighting plane were tackling the blaze,
which may have been started by sparks from the brakes of a locomotive,
said officials.
Forest rangers counted 87 separate fires alone on Monday, mostly in the
south of the country, in Campania and Calabria.
Fires cost the country 500 million euros (680 million dollars) a year,
said Cesare Patrone, the head of the forest rangers, as he presented a
new strategy to manage the problem this year.
His plan would require thousands of firefighters -- professionals and
volunteers -- to be backed up by 8,000 forest rangers with 3,300 fire
engines, including firefighting helicopters and planes.
A heatwave in Italy last month, in which temperatures in some regions
reached as high as 45 Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit), sparked dozens
of forest fires in Sicily and the southern mainland.