People denounce delayed response as fires burn down forests in KP

When fires engulfed pine and olive forests in the Sherani and Musakhel districts of Balochistan in May, nobody cared until they got out of control and had caused three deaths, as well as the destruction of invaluable forests.

The episode was repeated in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa now, where forest fires have raged over the last two weeks, but drew attention to the authorities only a few days ago when a mother and three children died.

The latest reports and satellite data show that forest fires in the districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Swat, Shangla, and Buner seem to have lost their intensity, but they have not yet been extinguished.

Forest fires spread across the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa mountains at a much larger scale until June 1st.

The local population blames rescuers and district administrators for the delayed response to extinguish fires that were first reported in the Ilam forest in Buner district began before May 23.

Two weeks ago, forest fires broke out in several areas in the three districts, turning trees over thousands of hectares into ashes.

Fire data collected by NASA satellites indicate that the wildfires had been raging for more than two weeks, with occasional falls lasting no longer than 24 hours.

Buner and Swat were the worst-hit districts, where dozens of mountain fires began after May 23 and continued to jump through forests until May 31, when they began to recede, NASA’s fire maps show.