Hungarian Soldiers Help Fighting Fire in Slovenia

As part of an international effort to help containing fires in Slovenia, Hungarian Defense Forces soldiers were helping to extinguish forest fires in Hungary’s southwestern neighbor.

Air force units from Austria, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia were assisting Slovenian firefighters in the effort to contain and put out fires. It was on July 20^th that Slovenia requested assistance to tackle unprecedented forest fires in the Karst of Gorica region of the Miren Kostanjevica municipality.

On July 22, 13 Hungarian soldiers took off in two helicopters for Temnica in Slovenia, where they joined Austrian, Croatian, Italian, Romanian, Serbian and Slovakian soldiers in a major effort to extinguish the forest fires that have been raging in the region in recent days. The Mi-17 helicopters were later redeployed to Divaca.

Over three days, the troops flew for nearly 30 hours and used 195 balloons, or 585 tons of water, to contain the flames. The people of the region are grateful to the soldiers of all the nations involved in the extinguishing operation, who persevered in the heat and performed a superhuman performance to protect and save the values of the Slovenian people living there, the military website honvedelem.hu reports.