By:Hertha Ekandjo
The Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism started capacitating different communities through education in basic fire prevention and fire fighting late last month.
This is according to the Environment Ministry’s fire management focal person, Micheal Otsub.
The South Korean government has donated N$1,042 million (U$70,000) to the Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism through the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to help combat wildfires in the country.
The Ministry says it has utilised these funds to conduct firefighting training for the general public in different regions in the country.
The first training was conducted in the grassland of Engombe settlement in the Oshana region, where a total of 25 participants were trained.
The first phase of training is theory, after theory, the trainees are then taken out to demarcated areas where the practical training takes place.
Otsub said the Ministry already started establishing firefighting units during these training sessions.
“During the training, we already started organising the firefighting units, and we command them to organise themselves as if they are handling a real fire situation. This is where they already have their fire boss, deputy fire boss and then the fighters at the sites of the fire,” he explained.
Otsub stated that these trainings give every trainee the sense of what their task is when it comes to fire occurrence and suppression.
Last week, the Ministry conducted training in Rundu in the Kavango East region. Communities listed for the training were Ambrosius Heingura, Konkara and the state forest in Hamwenye.
The Kavango West region has about 45 participants undergoing the training.
According to Otsub, the ministry will also be providing these trainings in other parts of the country, namely in the Otjozondjupa, Kunene and Omaheke regions.
“This is where maybe 150 community members will be trained on how to prevent and suppress fires in their areas when a fire occurs,” Otsub said.
The Ministry’s fire management focal person stated the country’s forest is becoming drier because of less rain and high temperatures and strong winds which are the common cause of wildfires.
He further said with strong winds fire spreads very fast resulting in bigger areas being burned down.
Meanwhile, Sikongo Daniel from Ambrosius Haingura community forest, said the training taught them a lot about firefighting.
“We have learned about a lot of things that we did not know about the forest. We learned about the prevention of fires, how to respond to fire, and we learned so much about the chemistry of fire,” he said.
Last year, the Environment Ministry reported that the country had witnessed a staggering 499,344 hectares of land consumed by uncontrolled fires since the beginning of the 2022 fire season in April.
In 2021, a total of 3 million hectares burned, while in 2022, the number stood at 2.4 million hectares.
At that time the Ministry’s Chief Public Relations Officer Romeo Muyunda had mentioned that the alarming statistics highlighted the urgent need for increased awareness and preventive measures to mitigate the devastating effects of veld fires in Namibia.
“The Ministry is calling upon members of the public, farmers, and property owners to put measures in place to minimise the risk of veld fires. Namibia’s fire season starts in April and ends in September and has been observed to cause massive damage to the environment and properties over the past years. The fire season is usually characterised by strong winds, high temperature and dry vegetation resulting in fire burning uncontrollably,” he had said.
Also, during that time, Muyunda highlighted the human and ecological toll of the previous fire season noting that in 2022, five people sustained serious injuries, and tragically, three lives were lost due to the fires.
The fires also resulted in substantial losses of livestock and wildlife across 13 regions in Namibia.
“The affected regions during the 2022 fire season were as follows: Kavango East (110,334ha), Kavango West (815,724ha), Otjozondjupa (577,926ha), Zambezi (327,326ha), Kunene (64,131ha), Erongo (47,545ha), Hardap (96,679ha), Khomas (49,032ha), //Kharas (93,579ha), Omaheke (93,579ha), Oshana (24ha), Omusati (212,529ha), and Oshikoto (11,954ha),” the Ministry said.
In Namibia there have been 472 MODIS fire alerts reported so far in 2023 considering high confidence alerts only. This total is normal compared to the total for previous years going back to 2001. The most fires recorded in a year was 2011, with 5,628.