The Times of Israel reports: Ordinary Israelis on Thursday were doing what they could to help the 75,000 Haifa residents who were evacuated from their homes due to fires that raged in and around the port city, destroying buildings and wooded areas.
Dozens of organizations and local councils, including the Islamic Movement in Israel, the Kibbutz Movement, the Bnei Akiva youth movement and the Zionist Union party, set up services to enable the public to host evacuees in their homes.
Fire-fighting aircraft and hundreds of fire crews on the ground spent much of the day trying to extinguish a series of blazes in the Haifa area, struggling to contain flames that were fanned by strong winds and spread through parched brush following an unseasonable dry spell. The fires came after over the past few days sporadic blazes flared up at various locations around the country straining Israel’s fire-fighting services.