Up to 400 Families Affected by Fires in Toledo  

It’s been several weeks of continuous heat and widespread flames ripping through the country. Thousands of acres of land have been affected, as well as hundreds of families. With a dry season so uncharacteristically long, environmentalists are calling this one of the most severe heatwaves the country has ever experienced. With fires so intense, it took a collaborative effort between the government, N.G.Os, and private companies to battle the flames. Today, a joint press conference was held to provide details of how the fires grew out of control.  The stakeholders also provided an assessment of the damage caused. Here’s Daniel Mendez, National Emergency Coordinator with those figures.

 

Daniel Mendez, National Emergency Coordinator

“We noted that continuous high temperatures and low rainfall across the country increase the likelihood of fires across the country. In the Toledo district in particular, we saw there were localized fires which developed near the San Pedro Columbia area, and these increased significantly during the period of May fourteenth to seventeenth. There were also significant increases in central and southern Toledo throughout that period. On the board, on the screen, you will see the temperatures for the period from the first to the twenty-seventh, and in particular, I want to highlight to you that this the peaks the peak temperatures. It’s actually when we saw most of the fires starting to develop. You will see that there were high, record highs of one hundred seven degrees in the central farm area. And this of course, was a similar trend across the country. That in combination with the low rainfall, really created that condition. So our damage assessments have been ongoing because you understand that this is a situation that is, has not stopped. There are continuing fires across the country and we have been responding to these issues for the past three weeks. We also have people who responded to fires as of last night. And so it’s an ongoing operation. But what we have been able to gather so far in the Toledo district, there are upwards of four hundred families which have been impacted by this fire. This is a spread across a space of twenty-eight communities across all across the district. And up to now our assessments continue, but we noted that there are a there is a minimum of six thousand acres of farmland which have been damaged. There has been also great loss to damage to the environment, and there is a lot of loss to livelihood. We also note that ten houses have been destroyed in two communities. There were eight in the Grand Creek Village and two in San Pedro, Columbia. In the Mountain Pine Ridge, we also noted that approximately thirty-two thousand acres were affected in that area. However, we have not yet been able to begin the assessment of the Cayo district to determine the totals the total impact so far. We will be doing that in the next few days.”