Highway 6 northbound and Highway 444 near the Ben Shemen interchange were closed to traffic in both directions Wednesday afternoon after a brush fire broke out in the area. The blaze is also burning near Highway 1. Approximately 400 hikers are being evacuated from the area. Israel Fire and Rescue Services said 12 firefighting crews were battling the blaze, supported by six firefighting aircraft conducting targeted water drops to contain the flames.
As the fire intensified and conditions on the ground deteriorated, Fire and Rescue Commissioner Eyal Caspi ordered a nationwide mobilization of additional resources. Some 50 firefighting crews from districts across the country are now making their way to the area. According to Fire and Rescue Services, firefighters are battling the rapidly spreading blaze in the Ben Shemen Forest, from the Hadid cemetery eastward toward Neot Kedumim, as strong winds fuel the flames.
Members of the elite Lahava rescue unit have also been dispatched to the area to help locate hikers and escort them out of the danger zone.
Ynet reports a fast-spreading wildfire in the Ben Shemen Forest that closed highways and forced the evacuation of about 400 hikers, and it reports the firefighting response clearly and with sources. It says strong winds are driving the flames but never tells the reader that warming makes fire weather like this more frequent or more severe.
Leaves out the climate link
Serious
“firefighters are battling the rapidly spreading blaze in the Ben Shemen Forest, from the Hadid cemetery eastward toward Neot Kedumim, as strong winds fuel the flames”
Why this matters
Ynet describes a rapidly spreading forest fire driven by strong winds, the conditions that make up fire weather, and explains its spread by the wind alone.
The impression it gives
A reader takes the fire as a one-off weather event, with nothing to suggest such blazes are becoming more likely or more intense.
The context
Human-caused warming has made fire weather more frequent and more severe. The article contains no word on climate change or warming anywhere, so the reader gets no hint of that link.
How we know
On the recordThat warming has made hot extremes, heavy rainfall, agricultural and ecological drought, fire weather and intense tropical cyclones more frequent or more severe.ipcc.ch (opens in a new tab)
Checked against the whole articleIt never uses the words “climate” and “warming”.