Bushfires hit 2 Cotabato towns
COTABATO CITY — Swaths of forests and grasslands, withered by lack of rain since February, have been razed by scattered wildfires in two towns of Cotabato province since Sunday.
As of Thursday, at least 30 hectares of grasslands have gone up in smoke in the Lower Binay area in Magpet town, local officials and community elders interviewed by BusinessWorld said.
Fires, one after the other, also lit up the dry hinterlands of Gambodes and Binoungan in Arakan town until growing big to sweep through the area towards Magpet on Wednesday, they said.
Some residents of these three areas have been displaced and given essential humanitarian aid.
Cotabato Gov. Emmylou Taliño Mendoza also convened the Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office to draft a plan with municipal officials on measures to take to forestall bushfires as the summer season sets in.
“We are waiting for the results of the joint investigation on these fires by the local government units in Arakan and in Magpet and the Bureau of Fire Protection,” Ms. Taliño Mendoza said. — John Felix M. Unson