Tokyo (dpa -Afx) – The largest forest fire in Japan has been keeping the residents in the northeast of the island kingdom in breath. The fire in Ofunato, which broke out last week in the Prefecture Iwate, spread to more than 2,600 hectares until the morning, as the Japanese television station NHK reported, citing the prefecture administration. This corresponds to an area of around 3,600 soccer fields. Dense white smoke rose above the mountain forest northeast of the Ofunato bay. According to the NHK, a helicopter of the defense forces has thrown water since the early morning.
According to the Authority of Fire and Disaster Protection, it was the largest forest fire in Japan since the late 1980s, reported the Kyodo news agency. The Tohoku region, which includes the Prefecture Iwate, had been hit by a heavy earthquake and huge tsunami almost exactly 14 years ago. The catastrophe on March 11, 2001 killed around 20,000 people and triggered a Super-Gau in the Fukushima nuclear power plant.
Japan’s head of government Shigeru Ishiba promised during a parliamentary meeting to “use all the skills of the fire brigade and the self -defense forces to prevent people from being affected”. According to Kyodo, the emergency services pulled together in Iwate had previously managed to prevent the flames from spreading to residential areas in Ofunato./LN/DP/ZB