Smoking

[KEND]

14-Year-Old’s Water Pipe Blamed for Israeli Fire
JERUSALEM — A 14-year-old boy was arrested Monday as the prime suspect in the largest fire in Israel’s history, a four-day inferno that left 42 people dead, devoured 10,000 acres of forest and forced Israel to request international assistance.
The boy, from the Carmel area, where the fire began, admitted under questioning that he had been smoking a tobacco water pipe, or narghile, and had thrown away a hot coal that set off the fire, said Micky Rosenfeld, a police spokesman. He fled the scene, and without sounding any alert, went back to school, Mr. Rosenfeld said.
Two other boys from the same area, 14 and 16, who the police said were suspected of starting the wildfire through negligence, were released to house arrest on Monday. The two, who are brothers, were not identified because they are minors. Relatives and their lawyer have denied that the boys were involved in starting the blaze, and their connection to the third boy was unclear.
The fire, which broke out in the forested hills near Haifa, in northern Israel, on Thursday, was mostly extinguished by Sunday evening, with officials crediting assistance from an international fleet of more than 30 firefighting aircraft and the so-called Supertanker, the world’s largest fire-extinguishing plane.
The death toll had stood at 41 until Monday, when the highest-ranking woman on the Israeli police force, who was critically injured in the fire, died.
Many Israelis had been closely following the condition of the woman — the police chief of Haifa, Deputy Commander Ahuva Tomer, 52 — as she hovered between life and death for four days. Ms. Tomer had become a national symbol in the fight against the ravaging fire. A police spokesman said that she had been promoted posthumously to the rank of brigadier general.
Ms. Tomer was interviewed Thursday, while sitting at the wheel of her police car, by an Israeli television reporter minutes before she set out and was caught in the flames. She had been traveling behind a busload of cadets training to become prison service officers, who had been sent north to help evacuate a prison threatened by the blaze. The bus and Ms. Tomer’s car were engulfed by flames as the rapidly spreading inferno was fanned by strong, unpredictable winds. Witnesses described the victims as being suddenly surrounded by walls of fire.
All 42 victims — including most of the cadets, two police officers and a 16-year-old boy from Haifa who was a volunteer with the fire service — were killed in the same firetrap.
The devastating toll has prompted fury that those in the government responsible for the fire services failed to ensure that they were equipped to handle the raging forest fire.
Israel, with its hot summers and paucity of rain, is prone to brush fires. A recent fire in the Golan Heights that burned for more than a day and scorched several thousand acres was set off by hikers who burned their toilet paper. Other fires have been started by stray shells used during military training.
A version of this article appeared in print on December 7, 2010, on page A5 of the New York edition.

[DeusTrismegistus]

Wow that is terrible.