Farmers concerned about ‘unnecessary’ veld fires

While strong winds have been a contributing factor, the recent veld fires devastating thousands of hectares of land could have been avoided, says Dr Jack Armour, commercial manager at Free State Agriculture (FSA), responsible for disaster mitigation and response. “If one looks at the AFIS map of fire incidents over the past 2 days, it clearly shows most of the fires occurred along national roads,” says Dr Armour.

According to Armour, the prevalence of fires along national roads occurs due to various factors such as irresponsible drivers throwing cigarette butts out of car windows and fires carelessly made and not properly extinguished by road workers and commuters along the side of the road to keep warm. Homeless people sleeping and cooking under bridges and culverts under roads is another concerning social trend. Finally, poor fire load reduction control (which consists of the cutting of grass and bushes) represents a failing on the part of national road authorities.

“Human action is also the root cause of many of the fires along the Lesotho border. Fires are deliberately started as an act of intimidation and retaliation when farmers illegally use the grazing lands of others.” says Armour. “Faulty Eskom power lines & malicious arson may also cause fires.”

“Under the predicted Red Fire danger index conditions of gale-force, hot, gusty winds blowing over heavy fuel loads, Fire Protection Associations (FPA’s) are all placed on high alert, but are basically helpless against runaway veld fires in these conditions,” notes Dr Armour. “For this reason, prevention always remains better than control.”

In accordance with this reasoning, FSA calls upon road users to be vigilant, avoiding the discarding of cigarettes and litter, in particular glass and other items which may have a magnifying effect. FSA further calls upon the relevant authorities to reduce the fire load represented by grass and bushes along the roads. Farmers are urged to report areas where there is a high fire load, as well as checking their powerlines for faults and bird nests and reporting these to ESKOM and to FSA to follow up on.

“By observing these precautions, we can avoid unnecessary damage to land, infrastructure, livestock, and ultimately human lives,” observes Dr Armour.