Boyolali, Ekuatorial – Mount Merbabu National Park agency established a group of volunteers or known as fire care community to tackle forest fires in the area, said an official, in Boyolali, Central Java, on Monday (26/10).
Mount Merbabu, stretched across Semarang, Magelang, and Boyolali districts, is a protected area of 5,725 hectares serve as conservation area and natural laboratory.
“The fire care community [MPA] consists of volunteers and they are not getting paid,” said Kurniadi Wirawan, coordinator for Mount Merbabu National Park Agency (TNGM) Protection, in Boyolali, Central Java, on Monday (26/10).
Wirawan added that the community, coming from local people who knew the forest very good, covered ten spots of the mountain area.
He said that the community has been very helpful to protect the forest as they also have interest for the national park. “We have the same goal which is to protect the forest as people are depending on its forest products and water,” he said.
The agency, he said, has been actively giving preparations for the fire care community as fires have started ravaging the national park in September and October due to long dry season. “Fires have burned at least 151.98 hectares,” he said.
Meanwhile, Himawan Gunadi, an official at the agency, said that the fires started in Getasan of Semarang district which spread quickly to Boyolali district and Magelang district.
“We have managed to put out the fires in Getasan but it showed again in other place. But, we put it out. Recent fires happened for almost two weeks,” Gunadi said.
It took a while to put it out, he said, because the fires were located at the peak of the mountain which was hard for volunteers to reach. In addition, fires spread quickly because of lots of bushes and dry twigs which were easy to burn. Also, strong winds made it hard to put out.
“We were having difficulties to put out fires because it was located in 2000 meter above sea level surface. We were really working hard. We managed to assess the damage, most of burned areas were consists of twigs, bushes, trees with small diameters,” he said adding that the community broke twigs to isolate fires from spreading.
The fires have also burned down 2.5 km of water pipes belong to local people of Tekelan and Ngaduman villages. Bramantyo
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