FOR four days a bushfire in Lako village on Lou Island, Manus Province continues to burn, affecting local’s gardens, vegetation and the community.
The fire is currently at the last hilltop where it is close to the main village.
Rei and Lako Ward development officer Kahon Reson told the Post-Courier that the community are struggling to keep the fire from getting stronger as they work together today to stop is from coming closer to the village.
“Currently, the fire we cannot control it, we definitely need God to help us to rain, mostly at this time we need everyone’s prayer and the government as well. The next option now is to mobilize the whole Balopa LLG to come work together.
“The strategy we will use now is water because previous days we weren’t using much water because of distance and manpower. It was really hard for us to carry water, so we made fire breaks, clearance but it does not seem to work,” he said.
He added that the wind blowing is getting stronger making it impossible for the men to work to stop the fire.
“It is hard to kill the fire, because when the wind is blowing it is moving at a very rapid pace and it is difficult,” he said.
Mr Reson said that today the community plans to put out the fire that is threatening and coming closer to the main village.
The men from Rei and Lako have gone up to the mountain carrying one gallon of containers to help stop the fire from spreading.
“The men from Rei and Lako, we gave them one bottle water and biscuit when they head up to the mountain, the fire is currently near the main village, so it will take the men 10 minutes to carry saltwater to the mountain and 5 minutes to the fire,” he said.
The current community action plan:
- Conduct meeting
- Appoint working committee
- Appointment of five surveillance team
- Team Leader’s were appointment
- Launching of drone to identify specific locations to deploy teams.
- Establishment of central command center
- Daily working plan
- Daily occurance reporting and planning.
The community from Rei and Lako have come together to work to fight off the flames that are still currently alive on the mountain.