Interior minister defends himself over Carmel fire disaster

Interior Minister Eli Yishai told the Knesset State Control Committee on Tuesday that his pleas to bolster an inadequate firefighting service were ignored for years.

“The writing was on the wall,” Yishai told the meeting, which had convened to review the comptroller report into the 2010 Carmel fire. The blaze raged out of control for three days and killed 44 people in the Carmel region in the north of the country.

Yishai (Shas) said that when he entered his post he found a fire service with “significant deficiencies” but his warnings both to the cabinet and to the inner cabinet failed to produce reforms or budgets. Out of a request for NIS 700 million, he received only NIS 100 million, he said.

Yishai added that the fact that it has taken a year and a half since the disaster to pass a reform bill that restructures the fire service is an indication of just how hard it was to get anything done before the blaze.

Under the planned reform, the fire, emergency and rescue services will be united under one administrative unit controlled by the Internal Security Ministry.

Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovich, who also attended the meeting, lamented the fact that even after the reform plan had been approved he still needed to fight for the required budget.

“My staff and I sweated blood to get the reform through,” he said.

Aharonovich said that on Monday he finally received over NIS 1 billion for the next five years to carry out the reform, in addition to NIS 400 million that has already been invested in improving the fire service.

Notably absent from the meeting were Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz.

The squabble over budgeting between Steinitz and Yishai before the disastrous fire became a sore point after it was highlighted in the comptroller report.

According to Yedioth Ahronoth, MK Yoel Hasson (Kadima) criticized the government for not ordering its own investigation instead of leaving it to the state comptroller.

“The fact that there has not been a state probe into the Carmel disaster is based on political considerations,” he told the committee meeting. “There is an attempt being made to prevent individual blame for ministers because that has a political price.”

Hasson lashed out at Steinitz for not taking part in the meeting.

“I am shocked that the finance minister hasn’t arrived and isn’t prepared to face up to the report,” he said. “The empty seat saved for the finance minister is proof of his contempt for the report. Steinitz is treating the report as though it is just a pile of paper.”