Early Warning of Forest Fire Danger in Pakistan
31 May 2000
The early spring fire season in China and Mongolia, and the current fire situation in the South of the Russian Federation have confirmed the severity of the fire season in Central Asia. As can be seen on the Early Fire Warning Section of the GFMC website the global to regional fire weather forecasts of the Experimental Climate Prediction Center the forecasted and modeled fire danger for the next week and the next month remain severe.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA) on 20 May 2000 issued a new upddated drought report for Pakistan. According this report (
OCHA/GVA - 2000/0099, 30 May 2000) the drought situation in Pakistan is continuing. According to UN-OCHA the worst drought in Pakistan’s history is rapidly taking hold, particularly in the provinces of Balochistan and Sindh. The drought is now spreading into other, normally rain-fed areas in Pakistan. Much of the country has received very low rainfall since 1998 and this situation has been exacerbated, particularly in the customarily rain-fed areas, by an unusually dry period which commenced in November 1999 and has continued up to the present. The worst-affected regions are Chaghi, Kalat, Killa Saifullah and Aranji in the Khuzdar district of Balochistan, but the drought has also taken its toll in and around deserts of Thar in Sindh and Cholistan in Punjab. In all, around 2.4 million people have been affected; 1.1 million and 1.3 million, in Balochistan and Sindh respectively.It is expected that the forest fire situation will be extreme in the coming weeks and months in Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan. See IFFN No. 22 (April 2000) for a recent national fire report from Kazakhstan. In the GFMC archive the 1999 Afghanistan Fire Emergency can be accessed.