Ethiopia Forest Fire Emergency Update: 13 March 2000 15:00 GMT
Ethiopia Forest Fire Emergency Update
13 March 2000, 15:00 GMT
Update reports were received from Bale and Borana Zones.
Around Angetu (Bale Zone, south of the National Park), where fires were reported to be contained just two days again, new fires have started again. Most likely, these fires were purposely started by farmers who want to clear land. However, this needs confirmation.
In Sewana Forest around Jigessa (Borana Zone) a very vicious fire is raging the forests. The expert of the Ministry of Agriculture who is monitoring the situation in that area describes it as the “most enourmous” fire he has encountered since he was deployed to the area (three weeks). Judging from his description, we assume that a fully-fledged crown fire has developed.
Concerning the weather forecasts: Please visit the fire weather tables and synoptic maps of today’s morning update. There is no rainfall expected within the next days.
The Ethiopian National Fire Fighting Committee, supported by the International Fire Emergency Advisory Group, has set up an Incident Command System. The structure of the system is given in the chart (Fig.1).
Fig.1. Structure of the Incident Command System (State: 11 March 2000)
For further information (history of the current fire situation, etc.) please refer also to the earlier reports this and last week at the Current Significant Fire Events page. Some visual impressions from the currently ongoing fires in Ethiopia are also available.
