Left in ashes by wind-whipped inferno, Canada Park grapples with near-total devastation

The scent of charred wood hung heavy in the air, though the flames had been extinguished days earlier. Skeletons of trees loomed over the ash-whitened hillside, some still emitting wisps of smoke as they smoldered. Canada Park, once a haven for hikers and cyclists, lay empty and desolate early Sunday afternoon in wake of the wildfires that devastated central Israel last week.

The woodland park, one of the hardest-hit sites during the blazes that tore through the hills west of Jerusalem on Wednesday and Thursday, will take decades to recover, said its chief caretaker at the KKL-JNF Jewish National Fund.

“It was a gem. It was heaven on earth that was burned,” lamented Nitai Zakharia, the park’s head forester.

Zakharia, who has managed the park for seven years as a KKL field director, looked despondent as he surveyed what remained of the forest in his pickup truck that day, passing large swaths of ashen ground where bushes and trees once stood.

Canada Park, also known as Ayalon-Canada Park, stretches across some 12,000 dunams (3,000 acres) in the Judean foothills. Located in the West Bank just over the Green Line, the park attracted 2-3 million visitors each year.

That is, until the fires came.

According to Zakharia’s rough estimate, the blaze torched around 70 percent of the park’s flora, covering some 8,000 dunams (2,000 acres).

According to official estimates, at least 20,000 dunams (5,000 acres) burned across the area of the Jerusalem hills, devastating forests, though there was only minimal property damage and only a handful of minor injuries.

Firefighters managed to bring the blazes under control by Thursday, but many were still working overtime as of Sunday to combat sudden flare-ups that threatened to reignite conflagrations.

As he drove, Zakharia’s walkie-talkie chattered with reports of small fires breaking out. Flames were kicking back up in Kula Forest, near Elad, which also falls under his purview.

In Canada Park, several tree trunks were burning idly Sunday afternoon, producing small flames and billows of smoke three full days after firefighters managed to contain the outbreak.

Pointing to leaves that had turned orange-red, Zakharia somberly noted that many of the trees that weren’t burnt to a crisp had still sustained irreparable heat damage and would likely die in the coming weeks.

‘Farewell to the park’

In years past, Canada Park had seen small brush fires that spread across two to three dunams before being quickly extinguished by KKL’s own firefighting division.

“We weren’t deluding ourselves,” Zakharia said. “It was clear to us that we were sitting on natural resources that were liable to burn, but we never expected a fire like this.”

At 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday morning, as Israelis marked Memorial Day, fire broke out in Eshtaol Forest, immediately south of Canada Park on the other side of Route 1, a major highway connecting Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Flames were carried north by dry winds that reached 80 kilometers per hour (50 mph), and it was not long before sparks leapt across the highway into Canada Park.

The staff in Zakharia’s region had been spread thin that morning, helping fight fires near Elad and Eshtaol, leaving Canada Park largely undefended. While on his way to the park around noon, Zakharia telephoned a colleague responsible for Eshtaol.

“I told him: ‘Look, Yaakov, make sure you have tons of forces on the border so that it doesn’t pass over Route 1 toward us.’ He told me that they had 10 fire engines ready to extinguish the fire,” he said.

By the time he reached Canada Park, flames had already begun to engulf its trees.

“It was clear to me that no one would be able to stop the fire in time,” Zakharia recalled. “That was my farewell to the park.”

From a lookout point, the forester watched as some firefighters left the scene to defend nearby communities threatened by the flames.

“I went to meet the departing group and asked them how they could leave at a time like this. It turned out that they had almost got trapped in the fire, and that their fire engine even went up in flames,” he said.

Days after the fire, the burnt-out frame of a a fire engine stood on the edge of the forest near the highway. Blackened remains of fire extinguishers and nozzles lay strewn about alongside melted metal that was still warm to the touch.

Investigators have yet to determine what started the fires but are thought to believe negligence was the trigger, despite rumors of arson committed by Palestinian saboteurs.

Zakharia dismissed the notion that human activity was to blame, noting the day’s hot and dry conditions and high gusting winds, as well as the topography.

“A large wildfire is almost always the consequence of the weather conditions. You almost never encounter big wildfires like this one if the weather conditions aren’t already very severe,” he said.

The fact that the fires came at the park from an incline only worsened the situation, he said, since “as we know, fire loves to rise upwards.”

“Nothing was working in our favor here,” he concluded.

‘Struggling to manage’

As Zakharia showed The Times of Israel around what remained of Canada Park, Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman arrived unannounced with two of her aides.

She rolled her window down from the back seat of her black government-issued Audi and asked how he was doing.

“We could really use some government backing. We’re really struggling to manage here,” he told her.

Last week, as the fires stretched resources, prompting pleas for help from abroad, many noted that the government had cut funding for the Fire and Rescue Authority by NIS 217 million ($60 million) in the national budget passed just weeks earlier.

Silman vowed a government resolution without going into detail, took Zakharia’s phone number, and went on her way.

Further down the trail, Zakharia explained that the ideal form of government support, in his view, would consist of fire buffer zones and other preventative measures in populated areas, to slow the spread of fires there.

Such barriers would lessen the strain on Israel’s small firefighting force, allowing more firefighters to deploy to forests rather than cities and towns.

“If a town isn’t well taken care of, you’ll have 100 teams stationed there, but if it is well taken care of, maybe 20 teams will go to defend the town from the fire, while the other 80 can go and save the forest,” he explained.

According to the Fire and Rescue Authority, manpower falls far below the ideal firefighter-to-resident ratio determined by the OECD, which makes policy recommendations for developed countries. While the global norm stands at one career firefighter per every 1,000 residents, Israeli fire teams are only able to employ one firefighter for every 4,500 people.

“We are stretched from end to end,” said Fire and Rescue Authority spokeswoman Tal Volvovitch to The Times of Israel in January.

But no amount of government backing will be able to speed up the decades-long process needed for Canada Park to return to what it once was.

“In order to once again call this place a forest, we’ll need at least 20 years, and that’s only on the condition it doesn’t catch fire again,” Zakharia said, pointing to decades-old oak trees planted in the 1970s, when the park was founded. Even saplings will likely take at least three years to bloom.

Many ecologists say periodic wildfires are a natural process and key to maintaining healthy woodland ecosystems, cleaning out dead organic material and helping to support species diversity by putting nutrients into the soil and opening up space for new growth.

Over the next few years, Zakharia hopes to turn the disaster into a fresh start for Canada Park, including adopting a more fire-conscious approach to how it is reforested.

To this end, he and his team intend to replant trees further apart from one another along the park’s main pathways and to create more vegetation-free buffer zones throughout the site.

“Just minutes after witnessing the fire, I began to think about the forest’s rehabilitation,” he said. “This is what puts wind in our sails.”