Forestry Minister says “We will add 5 fire-fighter airplanes to our inventory”
Minister Pakdemirli has made statements explaining Turkey’s struggle against forest fires. He said, “We fought numerous fires at the same time and had to split our strength.” He informed 5 additional aircraft and a manned inspection aircraft would be made available in the inventory, to challenge forest fires.
Minister Pakdemirli spoke about Turkey’s struggle against forest fires. He said “Although we fought numerous fires at the same time and had to split our strength, we did not give up our struggle under these severe circumstances”. The Minister noted that the weather conditions also made it difficult to fight said fires.
“We often face questions such as ‘Does the forest (administration) not have enough tools or not enough human resources?’ When fighting a lot of fires, you have to divide your teams and your strength, whether you want to or not. When you divide this power, it takes more time to achieve desired results. For instance, instead of sending 20 helicopters to control a fire, you have to send only 5 helicopters and the time to achieve the result extends.”
“Also we faced (re recent fires) with winds up to 70 kilometers and the humidity was around 50 percent. Under heavy conditions, we did not give up our fight for a moment, and we won the fight.”
THK aircraft have no certificates
The Minister stated that the planes of the Turkish air authority did not have a certificate to fly and informed that the another 5 aircraft and a manned patrol aircraft would be included in the inventory.
“In order for an aircraft to fly, it must have a certificate. Concerned aircraft (of THK) have not had said certificate for 2-3 years and required maintenance. If you spend $ 27 to $ 34 million on one, you know you can fly it already, almost the cost for a new plane. You know, the oldest of these planes is the 69 model, the newest is the 84 model. We have been working in line for the last 2 years, but we have accelerated this work very quickly. We have been given the required budget by concerned authority and we will be preparing the tender for it (5 + 1 planes) quickly and in the coming months.”
