Minister Yumaklı: Buca fire started from a 'welding machine', energy of the Çeşme fire has decreased

Minister of Agriculture and Forestry Yumaklı made the following statements:

While the fires that have been continuing for days in İzmir are causing anxiety among citizens, a new one is added to these fires almost every day. Finally, the fire that started in Buca grew in a short time and became extremely dangerous.

Appearing before the cameras regarding the ongoing fires, Minister of Agriculture and Forestry Yumaklı made the following statement:

624 fires have broken out in the last week, and we have brought 621 of these 624 fires under control.

The energy of the Çeşme fire has decreased, but the strong wind has not slowed down, which makes extinguishing these fires difficult.

All these fires are breaking our hearts; unfortunately, today we lost one of our colleagues who dove into these fires disregarding their own life, and they have been martyred. Another colleague of ours has been intubated.

We also lost a citizen in Ödemiş; I pray for God's mercy upon those who lost their lives.

Following the loss of this martyr, it is our duty to extinguish these fires and protect their legacy. The General Directorate of Forestry is the institution that has given the most martyrs after our armed forces who gave their lives for the defense of the homeland; I hope we do not lose anyone else from now on.

Today, another negative situation occurred; while we were struggling with all of this, as if we had never issued warnings, never cautioned, or never explained how dangerous it is, a spark from a welding machine at a factory in Buca jumped to the trash there, spread to the forest area, and became a serious danger.

We have issued warnings about this at least 50 times. A struggle is being waged here; I leave it to the public's discretion how else we should explain this.

We ask our citizens to warn those around them if they see people acting with such irresponsibility. If we had known they were going to do welding there, we would have intervened, but we do not have such a chance....

Our colleagues will continue to fight to extinguish the fires in Buca and Ödemiş. This is a war, and I have no doubt that we will win this war; however, while we are fighting here, manipulative disinformation about us on social media is tiring us out. No one has the right to demoralize our colleagues fighting in the field; everyone should pull themselves together. We said we would not engage in polemics, but let us at least have the right to protect the rights of our colleagues.