A team of 30 firefighters, from Thailand’s northeastern firefighting unit of the Electricity Generation Authority of Thailand (EGAT), has been deployed to help their colleagues in the northern province of Tak to cope with forest fires which have, so far, razed more than 8,000 hectares of forests around the Bhumibol Dam.

The forest fires, which reportedly started in early January, have affected forests in Mae Toen wildlife sanctuary in Tak province, Om-goi wildlife sanctuary in Chiang Mai province and Mae Ping national park in Lamphun province and they are still burning uncontrollably.

According to the firefighters in Tak, the forest around the Bhumibol Dam has been burning for the past two days, with no sign of being extinguished.

The danger posed by the raging fires prompted Mr. Kongkittipat Pichainarong, chief of the fire control unit at Sam Ngao district of Tak, to seek help from other firefighting units in the Northeast. The help has already arrived and been deployed.

Mrs. Kandasri Limpakhom, deputy director of Geoinformatics and Space Technology Development Agency (GISTDA), said today that satellite image assessment on Friday shows that about 8,200 hectares of forest, upstream of the Bhumibol Dam, have already been razed to the ground.

111 hotspots were detected yesterday, by the Suomi NPP satellite, in forests in Tak province