Staff Reporter
The Islamabad Wildlife Management Board (IWMB) staff has prepared a remedy to impending wildfires and made locally manufactured fire beaters to extinguish it as its fire fighting capacity scale up project was in the limbo.
The IWMB staff while extinguishing fire in the wild beat the fire with these beaters that help in instantly reducing the rising flares within shortest possible time as a quick response, an IWMB official told media.
“It is a 1’ by 1.5’ strips or bushes attached to a stick of even length where the tips of the bushes were fixed with fire resistant rubbers,” he explained.
The IWMB’s project aimed to enhance its capacity and equip its staff with latest gadgets to contain fires in the Margalla Hills National Park was awaiting the green signal of authorities concerned amid no development.
The Federal Ombudsman Secretariat or Wafaqi Mohtasib Secretariat had made recommendations which were endorsed by the Supreme Court of Pakistan to prevent fire incidents at Margalla Hills whereas it all remained on the cards and no practical step was taken so far.
He said that the Board had sent its own plan for beefed up fire fighting arrangements but to no avail.
“The main cause of fires in the Margallas is local people’s resistant and avenging attitude towards IWMB’s enforcement measures.
They set fire in the wild to discourage IWMB’s action against poaching and illegal tree cutting,” he told.
The IWMB official added that secondly, the tourists visiting the National Park were carrying out barbeque at various spots or lit up fire for fun was resulting into massive wild fires in the National Park which was an irresponsible attitude of the visitors.
He informed that the fire was blazed by the masses during early morning and after sunset timings which made it difficult to IWMB staff to respond at once or at least in possible minimum response duration.
To a question, he said the fire season in Margalla Hills National Park has started from April 1 whereas the Board staff was looking into the damages bore by wildlife species during fire incidents.
He informed that the IWMB Staff training was also going to be held by Rescue 1122 staff as due to Covid-19 pandemic it was not possible indoor and therefore, open air training was being organized.
Responding another query, he said the IWMB staff suggested for a fire ball to put out wild fire which was not recommended by the Rescue 1122 experts.
“The main reason is that fire balls create a blanket around the fire and smother it by reducing oxygen presence that helps to contain fire and it was not possible in forest as fire balls are only effective in closed canopy covered rooms,” he added.
He warned that the IWMB rangers were deployed in the locality and any person found setting fire in the Margallas will have to face a first information report (FIR) registered against him where an application would also be submitted before the area Station House Officer (SHO) to lodge FIRs against the culprits under section 144 imposed by the ICT administration.
