Wildfires in the Marghazar mountains of Swat – raging for the second day – have been completely extinguished in Sher Khane area, Rescue 1122 officials said on Sunday.
They added that their teams were trying to douse the blaze in the remaining areas.
Rescue 1122 personnel have been engaged in firefighting since Saturday.
Rescue operation is still going on in the rest of the forest of Marghazar for which more personnel have also been dispatched.
The officials said firefighters and trucks had been deployed near residential areas for the locals’ security.
Another fire erupted in the Shangla district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa on Sunday morning.
Teams of the Rescue 1122 and forest department have reached the area to put out the blaze.
K-P’s Forestry Environment and Wildlife Department tweeted that fires also erupted in Khwazakhela, Timargrah and Lower Dir,
The blaze in Khawazkhela had been doused, it added.
Also read: PM Shehbaz calls for air support to extinguish Swat forest fire
Police sources said at least 15 people had been arrested for setting fire to different places.
This was the third fire that erupted in the Shangla district in a matter of days.
According to Rescue 1122, a man and a woman, were killed in the forest inferno in Piyaz area of Shangla district. Also, a Rescue 1122 worker died during rescue operations elsewhere in the district. Four persons of a family were killed when wildfire erupted in in Chakesar tehsil of Shangla district on June 4.
PM’s adviser Ameer Muqam announced Rs1 million each martyr of the recent forest fires on behalf of Premier Shehbaz Sharif.
Meanwhile, President Dr Arif Alvi has expressed serious concerns over increasing incidents of forest fires in Pakistan.
He said that such incidents were causing financial losses. He added that most of them were preventable, pointing out that 85 percent of these fires were caused by unattended campfires and burning debris, malfunctioning equipment, negligently discarded cigarettes and intentional acts of arson.
He further said that these wildfires disturb the population of flora and fauna, eliminate wild animals, destroy the habitats of birds, and harm soil fertility, which hampers the growth and composition of vegetation, besides increasing the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, resulting in the emission of greenhouse gases.
Also read: Persisting wildfires
President Alvi said that most of these incidents could be prevented by taking simple precautions.
He advised the concerned authorities to work towards the prevention of wildfires by strengthening coordination across sectors to reduce such incidents, investing in both fire suppression and prevention, implementing existing fire management techniques, improving wildfire data collection and analysis, and strengthening stakeholders' coordination and preparedness.
It is worth mentioning here that in its detailed report, the Forestry, Environment and Wildfire Department found climate change to be a major factor in wildfire incidents.
The report evaluated 210 incidents of forest fire between May 23 and June 9 and found rising temperature to be a major reason, which led to increased evaporation, dried out the soil, and made the vegetation more flammable.
It also mentioned that tourists visiting the forests are causing wildfires and burning the grass is also a traditional practice in farming communities. Due to an increase in population, the demand for cultivated land has increased and fire is used to clear the land too in some parts.
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