Hot spells caused 15 major fires

JOHOR BARU: The present hot and dry spell has caused 15 major fires in six states, destroying land equivalent to the size of nearly 450 football fields.

Fire and Rescue Department director-general Datuk Mohammad Hamdan Wahid (pic) said the 15 hotspots involved peat soil, farms and estates, landfill, forest and plantations covering some 239ha of land.

Mohammad Hamdan said the hotspots included six in Sarawak, Pahang (four), Johor (two), and one each in Kedah, Kelantan and Perak.

“Most of the major fires have been put out and so far there are still 56ha to be doused,” he said, adding that there was a landfill fire the size of 3.23ha, which had been raging in Kota Tinggi in Johor for about three weeks.

Mohammad Hamdan said they were mobilising manpower and equipment from neighbouring states to put out the fires.

“We are also using our helicopters to carry out surveillance and water bombing in some areas,” he said, adding that all the department’s 10,000 personnel had been placed on alert.

He said the last three months had been a busy period for the department as they were attending to an average of 162 calls daily for farm and estate fires, forest, bush and rubbish fires.

Up until March 20, the department had received 8,986 calls for bush fires, forest fires (1,578 cases), rubbish fires (1,311 cases) and farm and plantation fires (827 cases).

Mohammad Hamdan urged the public not to carry out any open burning and to alert the authorities, especially the Department of Environment, if they came across those carrying out open burning.

“Based on investigations, most of the open burning cases are man-made either intentional or unintentional,” he said.