LA TRINIDAD, Benguet: More than 400 hectares of forest land in different parts of the province were recently ravaged by fire incidents that lasted for several days since the middle part of January.

Fire Superintendent Jessie Annasiw, provincial fire marshal of the Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP)-Benguet Provincial Office, said that the forest fires were reported in the towns of Atok, Bokod, Itogon and Tuba that resulted in significant damages in areas which had been preserved and protected by the Indigenous peoples and the local government.

The forest in Bokod suffered the heaviest damage where more than 155 hectares of the watershed was affected. The Itogon fire, on the other hand, incurred damages to more than 137 hectares of forest land. More than 93 hectares of forest were burned in Atok and more than 10 hectares of forest areas were ravaged in Tuba.

Annasiw said no casualties were reported in the fire incidents while arson investigators are still ascertaining the extent of the damage.

The BFP official likewise expressed his gratitude to the firefighters, volunteers, the Philippine Air Force (PAF), the community stakeholders and the barangay fire brigades for their unrelenting and uncompromising efforts to extinguish the forest fires.

He said firefighters faced difficulty in containing the forest fires at the mountain slopes because of the limitations of their firefighting equipment. However, the PAF helicopters played a key role in containing the fire through the bambi bucket operations, he added.

Annasiw is calling on all residents not to burn trash and dried leaves, especially when doing community cleanup campaigns. He also appealed to smokers not to indiscriminately dispose of their cigarette butts in the forest.