My name is Ofir Gamliel and I live in Moshav Ahihud in the north of Israel with my wife Carmit and our two daughters - Carmel, aged four-and-a-half and our baby, Clil, who is 9 months. As part of my job as a forest ranger for JNF-KKL in the Galilee, I'm responsible for planting trees and putting out fires in the region.

When the Katyushas started landing in the JNF forests, fire-fighting became my top priority; in fact it took all my time and attention. Like most people, I thought that the Katyusha attacks would stop within a day or two — I certainly never imagined they would last so long and cause so much damage to our woodlands.

Within a short period of time, an emergency center was set up at the Mahanayim Junction, and JNF-KKL crews from all over the country checked in and were sent on fire fighting missions.

We got into a war routine: the alarm sounded, we put on our flak jackets, the attack boomed in, the rocket's exact landing place was located, and then we rushed to extinguish the fire it caused. Nearly every time a Katyusha landed in a forest area, a substantial portion of it was burnt, turning the green to black. The dust and smoke and destruction brought tears to the eyes of all our workers.

For me, this last period has been very difficult. I've been totally occupied with putting out the fires and directing the fire-fighting planes, functioning on very few hours of sleep and missing my family and my home.

Thursday, August 10, 2006, was an especially hard day. A Katyusha landed at the Naburiya Spring which is on the scenic road through the Birya Forest. There was a real threat that the whole forest — which is a main symbol of the region — would burn down. Because of the difficult topography, the fire climbed up the mountain at an incredibly fast rate, and on its way destroyed both the young and the mature trees that were recently planted there. It also presented a concrete danger to the fire-fighting teams at the site. I told everyone to leave the area and then checked that indeed they all got out safely.

Meanwhile, Chimnir's firefighting planes arrived at the area, piloted by Aharon Berenson and Gideon Shatil. They tried to put out the flames but their efforts were unsuccessful. At the Birya Fortress, our forester from the Golan Heights, Effi Na'im, was in charge of the fire-fighting, working with the Golani Junction team. I told him he should leave his post as I didn't want him to be trapped by the fire. In the end, the fire reached the Birya Fortress and was stopped there.

Up above the fire, looking down at it from an observation plane, was Dr. Omri Bonneh, head of JNF-KKL's Northern Region. He gave a "live broadcast" of the fire's progress, and I used his report to guide the firefighting crews on the ground. After his plane landed, he and I together spent the rest of the day into night, surveying the burnt area and estimating the damage. At that stage it was reckoned that 1,000 dunams (250 acres) of young and old woodland in the Birya Forest had been destroyed by the fire.

Since the start of the war, I've been spending a great part of my time with Dr. Bonneh and have become all too familiar with the expression of sorrow on his face when he considers the loss of so much of the most beautiful forests in the Galilee, the forests of the Mountains of Naphtali and of Birya. With the ceasefire and the end of hostilities, we have so much work ahead to turn the black into green once again.