Beware, the bushfire season!

During the dry season, it is common to see fierce bushfires raging through dry vegetation on both sides of the road as one drives northward from the south through the transitional zone between forest and Savannah, and the Savannah proper.

The destruction of high tension electricity cables and poles by bushfires which has become an annual dry season ritual, often leads to cuts in power supply to some communities. This week, some communities on the Afram Plains had the misfortune of being cut off from electricity supply as a result of the destruction of poles and cables by bushfires.

The threat of bushfires to public safety is of even greater concern: Smoke from bushfires prevent or limit visibility on the highways, leading to road accidents during the dry season. Houses in most farming communities are built of thatch and have no resistance to fire. As a result, bushfires when they occur, easily sweep through whole villages and communities, wreaking great havoc on life and property.

Bushfires have sometimes trapped and killed people in the bush. In the northern region, thousands of tonnes of rice have been lost as a result of bushfires burning down thousands of hectares of the crop.

Then there is the ecological imbalance resulting from indiscriminate burning of the bush: Ghana’s forest and vegetative cover which was estimated at about eight million hectares less than a century ago, has shrunk to about 1.5 million today, mainly as a result of bushfires, land clearing for new settlements and poor agricultural practices. The Brong Ahafo, Northern, Upper East and Upper West Regions have the highest incidence of bush fires in the dry season.

The loss of forest and vegetative cover leads to soil erosion, drought, desertification, poor crop yields and poor economic status of affected communities and ultimately the nation.

Public education on the prevention and control of bushfires by the National Fire Service has been commendable but a lot still needs to be done as the impact of the education programmes have been far from satisfactory. Public education on the prevention, control and management of bushfires needs to dwell on the most common causes of the fires:

Although in hilly areas, loose rocks and stones falling from a height may ignite sparks as they hit other stones, leading to fires that spread fast, bushfires are mainly caused by human activities.

For many farmers lacking the financial means to clear farmlands in an environmentally responsible manner, burning the bush is a popular method of farmland clearing. The burning is however often not well controlled and the fires get out of hand.

The setting of fire to the bush to flush out small game is a popular method of hunting in many Savannah areas and another cause of bushfires. Hunters of big game sometimes leave fires used in cooking, roasting or smoking meat unattended to or fail to put them out when leaving the bush and the fires spread.

In some areas in the transitional zone, palm wine tappers have been blamed for bushfires. Cigarette butts thrown from moving vehicles or people walking along highways may lead to bushfires. Sabotage cannot be ruled out as deliberate setting of fires to farmlands has been recorded.

The General Telegraph recommends that in addition to public education on the prevention and control of bushfires, the laws on bush burning and the sanctions that go with them be rigidly enforced and applied. We also recommend the formation of bushfire control groups across the country and a replacement of all wooden electricity poles along the highways with aluminium poles. www.thegeneraltelegraph.com