Forest fire at Sungai Teraban

A major forest fire occured recently (20 June 2012, Wednesday), the forest fire occur around 3pm destroying a vast area of forest at the village.The smoke from the fire can be seen several kilometers away from the Belait Town.

The fire caused several the Sungai Teraban village and part of the Rasau road covered in smoke. A team of firefighters with a fire engine and a water tanker rushed to the scene upon receiving emergency call from the villagers. However the firefighters faced difficulties in containing the blaze due to the narrow access road as well as the absence of fire hydrants and open water source at the incident site. The firefighters had to take water from the fire hydrants which are available at the Sungai Teraban village to extinguish the fire. As the fire seems uncontrollable, the firefighters had to request reinforcement from the Seria Fire Station

According to one of the villagers said “I was sleeping when I heard my dog barked heavily, when I see outside I saw fire engines had arrived in front of my house and heavy smoke at the backyard of my house”.

Meanwhile a firefighter when interviewed said “The fire are difficult to extinguish due to the strong wind and the dry vegetation which cause the fire to spread faster. We also had difficulty in accessing the fire to contain it as fire engines are unable to enter as it occurred in the middle of the forest. We had to walk inside the forest with our hose lines to extinguish it fully. Our priority is to save and prevent the fire from spreading to several houses located near the incident site”.

As this news was written the firefighters still tackling the blaze. The forest fire occur four days after the bushfires at Kampong Pandan and Kampong Sungai Liang last Saturday.