Oversight Bodies Enter into Forest Fire Issue in Iran

A manager of the Organization of Forests, Rangelands and Watersheds has reported the involvement of “oversight bodies” in the discussion of multiple forest and rangeland fires across Iran.

Reza Bayani, Director General of the Engineering and Studies Office of the Organization of Forests and Rangelands, said on Tuesday, July 31st to ISNA news agency that “we cannot assume that some people are intentionally setting forests on fire for sabotage purposes”.

He said this organization had previously “predicted” many of these fires but lacks sufficient resources to combat them.

According to Mr. Bayani, this organization faces difficulties in accessing information and must pay substantial costs to the Iran Meteorological Organization for obtaining data, while obtaining part of its information for free from the European Meteorological Organization’s website.

According to ISNA news agency report, over the past one and a half months, 1,300 fire incidents have occurred across 13,000 hectares of forest and rangeland in Iran.

Based on this report, during the firefighting efforts to extinguish these fires, seven people “from public and firefighting forces lost their lives while putting out the fires”.

Previously, Gholamreza Jalali, the head of Iran’s Civil Defense Organization, had also said that forest fires do not have security reasons and are caused by failure to observe safety measures.

Source: Radio Farda