By Eddie O. Barrita
CEBU CITY, March 22 (PNA) — Fire investigators are looking into the cause of a bush fire that razed some 120 hectares of a government reforestation project in Barangay Canangcaan, Oslob town in southern Cebu.
The Oslob fire department said it is verifying initial reports that a 14-year-old boy may have caused it.
FO1 Ryan Inocencio of the Oslob Fire Station said they were not able to respond to the fire because they didn’t receive a report about the forest fire in Barangay Canangcaan.
He said the fire also broke out in steep terrain in the remote mountain barangay.
The fire occurred at 2 a.m. last Sunday and destroyed around 60,000 trees worth P285,000, said officials of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) 7.
It was one of the plantations under DENR’s National Greening Program (NGP).
The DENR 7 has ordered the immediate monitoring of its NGP plantations in the region, amid worries that forest fires are more likely to occur during El Niño.
Dr. Eddie Llamedo, DENR 7 spokesperson, said that based on the investigation by the Community Environment and Natural Resources Office (CENRO) in Argao, Cebu, the flames spread after a 14-year-old boy played with fire in the area.
The plantation had been identified by DENR as a “critical” site that was highly vulnerable to a fire.
Various species of trees such as kakawati, robles, ipil-ipil and molave were destroyed.
Llamedo said residents in the area failed to stop the forest fire because of the steep terrain and their lack of water sources.
Dr. Isabelo Montejo, DENR 7 executive director, has ordered the immediate monitoring of all 20 NGP plantations in the region.
He also urged towns with NGP plantations to organize their own community fire brigades to counter the effects of the El Niño phenomenon.
Montejo asked the existing fire brigades in nine critical NGP plantations to be vigilant and focus more on fire prevention rather than control.
The nine critical NGP plantations in Central Visayas are in Oslob and Argao in Cebu; Ubay, Buenavista, Getafe, Pilar and Talibon in Bohol; and Ayungon and Bindoy in Negros Oriental.
Montejo also ordered CENRO heads with NGP plantations to install fire lines.
These are 10-meter-wide stretches of land that are kept free of any vegetation.
These are established on the borders and after specified intervals inside the plantation to keep flames from spreading.
He also urged the public to avoid activities that may cause fires within forest areas such as throwing cigarettes, leaving campfires unattended and using slash-and-burn farming methods. (PNA)