Algerians Flee Wildfires in Country's Northeast

Civil Defense teams try to put out fires in Jijel last summer. (file photo/Civil Defense)
Civil Defense teams try to put out fires in Jijel last summer. (file photo/Civil Defense)
TT

Algerians Flee Wildfires in Country's Northeast

Civil Defense teams try to put out fires in Jijel last summer. (file photo/Civil Defense)
Civil Defense teams try to put out fires in Jijel last summer. (file photo/Civil Defense)

Algerian firefighters on Sunday were battling blazes in the northeastern Kabylie region as families were ordered to evacuate, local media and an AFP journalist said.

Residents were told to leave homes in the fire's path in Tizi Ouzou province, news site Ennahar Online reported quoting a forest official, though it was not immediately clear how many people were affected.

Numerous wildfires have broken out in Tizi Ouzou since Friday, though most of them have been brought under control or were expected to soon, said civil defence official Nassim Bernaoui.

"The situation is under control, but outbreaks of fire continue in hard-to-reach areas," he told AFP in the village of Ait Frah, south of Tizi Ouzou city.

The AFP journalist saw olive groves and fig orchards consumed by fires, as well as hen coops, beehives and some homes.

Authorities in Bejaia province, near Tizi Ouzou, ordered the evacuation of around 20 families from Mezouara village, which is located near a forest where blazes raged on Sunday.

Online videos showed a water bomber deployed to help contain the forest fire.

Wildfires are a common sight in summer in northern Algeria, increasingly exacerbated by drought and heatwaves scientists say are linked to climate change.

More than 30 people died in massive fires that ravaged Bejaia in July 2023, destroying thousands of acres of forests and agricultural lands as well as hundreds of homes.



Air Taxis Failed to Get Certified for the Paris Olympics

A Volocity air taxi flies during a demonstration flight at Paris Bourget Airport on June 20, 2023. (Photo by Geoffroy VAN DER HASSELT / AFP)
A Volocity air taxi flies during a demonstration flight at Paris Bourget Airport on June 20, 2023. (Photo by Geoffroy VAN DER HASSELT / AFP)
TT

Air Taxis Failed to Get Certified for the Paris Olympics

A Volocity air taxi flies during a demonstration flight at Paris Bourget Airport on June 20, 2023. (Photo by Geoffroy VAN DER HASSELT / AFP)
A Volocity air taxi flies during a demonstration flight at Paris Bourget Airport on June 20, 2023. (Photo by Geoffroy VAN DER HASSELT / AFP)

It was a tantalizing vision: autonomous flying taxis zipping spectators around the Paris Olympics, their electric engines humming softly over the cityscape, ushering in a new era in public transport.

Certification delays dashed that dream. But the backers of the Volocopter aircraft that was meant to ferry Olympic fans aren’t giving up. They carried out a test flight Sunday, marking the last day of the 2024 Olympics with a sunrise demonstration over the resplendent grounds of the Versailles palace, The AP reported.

The craft carried baggage, but no people, when it took off from the gardens of Versailles, from where the first hot-air balloon took flight in 1783.

The Paris region had planned for a small fleet of pilot-less air taxis for the Olympics, operated by Germany’s Volocopter and the Paris airport authority ADP.

Five Olympic routes were planned, including one landing on a platform on the Seine River -- and Volocopter CEO Dirk Hoke hoped that French President Emmanuel Macron would be his first passenger.

But ADP’s CEO Augustin de Romanet said Thursday that it had failed to win certification from Europe’s air safety agency in time for the Games.

Manufacturers of electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft — or eVTOL – remain confident that they’re a wave of the future. Companies around the world are trying to get their models authorized for flight.

Volocopter now hopes to get permission to carry passengers over Paris for the city’s next major event: the reopening of fire-ravaged Notre Dame Cathedral in December.

And rivals are aiming to make the vision of Olympic spectators hopping around venues in autonomous flying machines a reality the next Summer Games — in Los Angeles in 2028.