While some of us were spending our vacation during hot August days enjoying the sea view, in the late night of August 4th to August 5th a foreign KHD mission in Northern Macedonia was alerted, and a team of Lower Austrian Forest Fire specialists and other comrades (including members of FF Gumpoldskirchen and ELFR, as well as additional teams from Slovenia and Bulgaria) was assembled.
While the response team drove for nearly 1500 km, the necessary equipment and logistics followed along by train. After 30 hours of strenuous travelling, it was time to put the response team under even more strain in the area where almost 3000 hectares of forest and meadows was in flames or burned down, due to a long period of drought (40-45ËšC). Whole villages were threatened by the fire.