Erongo fires reach ‘alarming stage’

The Erongo Regional Council held an emergency disaster risk management committee meeting in Swakopmund last week over veld fires it says have reached an alarming stage after burning in the region since June.

Council chairperson Lazarus Kanelombe said fires in the region "have persisted over the past several months and have now reached an alarming stage, posing a serious threat to communities, livestock, grazing areas, infrastructure and the environment".

Kanelombe warned that if the meeting's decisions were not carried out, the disaster would no longer be manageable by September.

Thousands of hectares have been razed by fires across Erongo, chief regional officer Mupenzeni Ntelamo said, with as much as 100 000 hectares impacted.

No account had been given for the losses, he said, adding that one fire was caused by lightning and the rest by human negligence.

Ntelamo listed discarded cigarette butts, honey harvesters, people smoking snakes out of burrows, dumped ash and burning firewood among the causes. He said a child at Omatjete had been identified as having started one fire. Some fires were suspected to have been set by cattle thieves and poachers to destroy evidence.

Ntelamo claimed that police and the directorate of forestry had taken no action and that no police representative had been sent to the meeting.

"Why, despite hectares and hectares of destroyed farmland, has no one been arrested and charged to date?"

He said the fires in the Dâures, Karibib and Omaruru constituencies "are a regional concern" and "require a regional response".

Battling fires

Deputy director of administration Vigilant Hangula presented an action plan setting out fifteen measures, among them a regional fire risk map, community fire teams, an early warning system, pre-positioned equipment and a post-fire investigation after every major fire. The directorate of forestry is named as lead sector on almost every measure.

Kanelombe said the plan had been considered but not yet understood and that it required input from the Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism before adoption. The ministry did not attend the meeting, however.

A member at the meeting described the absence as a "disappointment".

Deputy director of finance Daphne Cloete said the regional disaster fund opened the financial year on 1 April with N$319 000. She said N$99 000 had been committed for firefighting equipment, blankets, food and drinks in the Karibib and Dâures areas.

Cloete said institutions required to contribute N$5 000 a year to the fund had not paid. The meeting resolved to write to them.

The Omaruru Farmers Association said farmers were satisfied with the defence ministry's assistance so far, with its personnel acting on time, and thanked the police and community volunteers. The association said the gap was equipment and training.

They presented a map showing between nine and twelve fires detected in one night and said that number could not be attributed to lightning.

Defence ministry spokesperson Colonel Petrus Shilumbu told Namibian Sun its personnel were deployed at Omatjete on 6 June, at Okombahe and Omatjete on 12 July and at Okotjandjoura on 27 July. He said the force has no firefighting equipment, that assisting is not its core mission, and that farmers called the military base at Karibib and the ministry's head office for assistance.