Thanks to technological and strategic upgrades and an increase in the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry's fleet of fire extinguishing vehicles, Turkey is now aiming to set its response time to forest fires to 10 minutes or less. The first response time to forest fires in Turkey has been decreasing during the last five years.
The first response time to forest fires was around 40 minutes in 2003. This was first reduced to 15, then to 12 minutes. Thanks to new technological investments, the first response time is set to go down to 10 minutes by 2023. In 1973, Turkey had around 20.1 million hectares of forest assets. In 2019, that number reached 22.7 million hectares.
With the investments made, the number of fire trucks increased to 1,072, water tankers to 281, first response vehicles to 586, bulldozers to 185, and other vehicles and construction equipment to 473. The total number of vehicles has since reached 2,597, while the number of personnel has reached 18,554. In addition to six administrative helicopters, 27 firefighting helicopters, two 10-ton amphibious aircraft, and a number of thermal drone cameras and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) were added to the fleet.
Read more on this story at the Daily Sabah
