Phu Quoc National Park has just organized a forest fire prevention and fighting drill to improve the ability to command, mobilize forces, vehicles and ensure safety in fire fighting. The commanding forces, local fire fighting teams and armed forces in Phu Quoc were trained to operate forest fire protection equipment proficiently, ready to respond when an incident occurred.
The forest area currently managed by Phu Quoc National Park is currently forecast to be level V, an extremely dangerous level.
In the grass fields of Bai Thom Hamlet, Rach Tram Hamlet, some other communes and wards have large grass fields with thick grass, bushes and climbing ropes... These are areas at high risk of fire because of the concentrated amount of flammable materials (peels) and are prone to fire, when a fire occurs, it spreads rapidly. Prolonged heat, accompanied by a shortage of rainfall, causes a very high risk of forest fires in many places.
Mr. Nguyen Phu Nam - Deputy Director of Phu Quoc National Park - said: "Training is not only to operate coordination regulations between the command board, the national park management board, the People's Committees of communes, wards, armed forces and people in the area, but also to accompany propaganda work, protection work, and forest fire prevention and fighting work. We hope to strengthen the relationships to minimize forest fires.
Forest fires and deforestation are one of the causes of forest loss, damage to natural resources, impact on the ecological environment and directly affect people's lives. Therefore, Phu Quoc National Park and related sectors are propagating and guiding forest fire prevention and fighting work so that forces and people have a firm grasp of fire fighting techniques, deploy fire fighting teams, and carry out quick and compact operations with fire fighting tools and means.
Lieutenant Colonel Huynh Thanh Le - Battalion Commander, Special Forces Mobile Police Battalion (under the Southwest Police Regiment, Ministry of Public Security) said: "We identify this as an important task and the responsibility of each officer and soldier in forest protection when a fire occurs. With the important location of forests in Phu Quoc, our unit has plans to launch when requested by the locality. We will also increase the number of available equipment and vehicles in the unit to work with the forces participating in firefighting when a fire occurs".
Phu Quoc National Park said that the area of protective and special-use forests managed by the unit is more than 36,000 hectares, accounting for about 65% of the island's area. The national park has plowed up fire-prone runways in key areas prone to fire; arranged about 80 offshore wells and equipped over 80 tanks from 2 to 5 thousand liters in locations without water resources. All forces are determined to proactively prevent and protect the safety of forest areas during the peak of this year's dry season.
