Four days after the start of the fire and Vitosha is still in flames

It has been four days since the fire in Bistrishko Branishte area of the Vitosha Mountain first broke out. Flames were getting perilously close to still unscathed forest on Wednesday afternoon. The fire covers an area of 250 decares, but the real scale of the damaged land is hard to assess because of a thick wall of smoke.

Late on Tuesday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs declined assistance offered by Israel saying that "domestic teams and volunteers are perfectly capable of handling the situation on their own". The Israeli side was ready to send fire-fighters and specialised equipment – aircrafts, designed specifically to help extinguish forest fires.

Many volunteers complained on Wednesday that authorities wasted three hours, in which people neither received instructions, nor were asigned any tasks. There were even calls in social networks for people to organise themselves in their efforts to fight the disaster.

"The volunteers were instructed and I am extremely happy that they are becoming better every day, thus enabling us to better coordinate our work. Having a team of 350 people and maybe more, we will manage to fight the fire in the afternoon and then we might say that the fire is under control," said Mr. Nikolay Nikolov, Head of the Fire Safety and Rescue Directorate General.

At the Government meeting on Wednesday, it became clear that the number of the military who will help to control the fire will be doubled. A T-62 tank, a prototype modified to fight fire, set off for Bistrishko Branishte where the fire is raging.

"We have a prototype developed from a T-62 tank of the fire brigade with a capacity and volume of up to 10 tonnes, which is currently being moved via a platform to the site of fire," Minister of Defence Anyu Angelov said following the Government meeting.

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