«Peasants of the area are in danger»; worrying forest fire progress in Cuba

The situation in the Cuban west is increasingly complicated with the fire of huge proportions, active for several days, in the Arenales zone, of the Mines de Matahambre municipality, in Pinar del Río.

The most recent official report released this Saturday ensures that the flames have devastated more than 2900 hectares of forests, between 10 and 15 % of the total pine forests have been affected.

The spread of fire has not been contained due to adverse climatic factors such as the intense drought and winds of 40 km/h, which favor the expansion of the flames, experts indicated.

But a farmer from that area told Martí News that the lack of human and material resources worsens the situation.

«The rangers, many of them have requested the decline of the military units, this is also a dependence on the minint, they no longer have the necessary strength, with the teams, with the necessary resources to be able to face it,» said the peasant Esteban Ajete Abascal from that province.

The Cuban authorities said that more than 500 troops from the body of rangers (CGB) of Pinar del Río and workers of all the forest companies of Pinar del Río are dealing with the incident.

The leader of the Independent Peasant League recalled that last year fires occurred in that same area that lasted whole weeks and burned numerous hectares of forests.

«I think that for this year, with the situation we have, what we are going to face will be very dramatic, because this affects that area of ​​the organs’ mountain range, all those peasants who live in that area are in danger,» he added.

Ajete Abascal considered that if in countries «even developed it has been difficult to turn off fires», with the conditions that Cuba has at the moment and «the bad work that is being done and the lack that there is» becomes even more difficult «to extinguish these fires of great magnitude.»

The peasant showed concern about the fact that the new sinister sumes greater precariousness to the residents of Pinar del Río who still fail to recover from the damage accumulated by previous fires, as well as by the hurricanes that have left the pine tree and fauna.

«Already with the previous fires and the little reforestation that is being done at the moment, because the forestry company is also in disruption with respect to the workforce, with respect to the resources, the lack of electricity and the lack of fuel. There is a process of reforestation of this area, of all the forest that is being lost and that it is not being done at this time in many places, it is said through the television news, it is said through the television news. It is not being done, «he criticized.

«The animals are suffering all this onslaught,» he said about wildlife damage.

«Remember that we are now at this time, after passing from Hurricane Ian, which devastated the entire wooded area and practically that was as if it had been burned by the strong winds and starting from now on, that all this forest began again to reverde, to take strength, and now with forest fires we lose much again losing much of this natural beauty that we counted in areas such as vineyards,» said the peasant.

Also in the mountainous province of Granma, in the Cuban East, forest fires occur.

From the oven zone, in Bayamo, the farmer Emiliano González said: «The situation is very complicated and there have also been forest fires in the guise area, in the oven area, and in many parts of the mountains of the Cuban East.»

«The body of rangers is practically in the minimum expression, there are practically no people who work on that, the pay is minimal, the places they have to travel are mostly inaccessible,» González said.

«The working conditions are very bad. They have no hoses, they have no supplies, they do not have the costume that leads to face fires in this way, the situation is collapsed wherever you look at it,» the farmer warned.