Azernews.Az

By Amina Nazarli

Georgia has been fighting the forest fires, which has expanded to an area of at least 20 hectares, since August 20.

High winds have caused extreme fire behavior and allowed fires to grow rapidly.

No victims have been reported so far, only property damage. The majority of holidaymakers left Borjomi Gorge, when smoke just began.

Neighboring Azerbaijan has hugely assisted in efforts to eliminate wildfires blazing in Borjomi region, in south-central Georgia.

Under the instructions of President Ilham Aliyev, 22 MES units, including one helicopter and additional two GPS helicopters with a crew of six, as well as 131 officers, were sent to the disaster zone to assist Georgia in fighting the forest fires.

Currently, the forces of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Azerbaijan continue operations of extinguishing the fires

SOCAR Georgia Petroleum, the "daughter" of the Azerbaijani state company SOCAR in Georgia, has allocated 65 tons of fuel to combat fires. The company also expressed readiness to participate in the restoration of forest areas destroyed as a result of the fires.

Azerbaijan also assists Georgia through providing images of the disaster territory, shot by the satellite Azersky, managed by "Azerkosmos" company.

The images helped to make an accurate assessment of the disaster area and the amount of damage. Space monitoring of the disaster continues.

Over the past five years, 220 forest fires have occurred in Georgia, resulting in the destruction of 1,370 hectares of forest.

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Amina Nazarli is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli

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