PETALING JAYA, April 2 — The El Nino phenomenon sweeping the country has left fire fighters to deal with an average of 283 emergency calls daily.

Last month, 8,802 open burning cases were recorded compared with 4,240 calls in February and 1,337 in January.

In the last 30 days, 1,439 forest fires were recorded nationwide, mainly at plantations, farms, forests, bushes and dumpsites.

In an exclusive interview with Malay Mail, Fire and Rescue Department director-general Datuk Wira Wan Mohd Nor Ibrahim said Kedah, Perak and Sabah recorded the highest number of cases.

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He said burning of agriculture waste or discarding cigarette butts indiscriminately could spark fires.

“People are advised to refrain from these acts, especially in this weather, to avoid starting fires,” he said.

Wan Mohd Nor said massive fires required about 100 personnel to be despatched to the scene.

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“During dire situations, personnel from several districts will be alerted and we work together to extinguish the flames.

“Sometimes, a station which is further may reach the scene earlier as we have to take into account factors such as traffic congestion. But we aim to have a shorter response time so we can attend to these fires as soon as possible.”

Wan Mohd Nor said open burning cases, especially forest fires, are tougher to combat compared to structural fires because of accessibility to water.

“For structural fires, fire engines have easy access to buildings and take up to two hours to douse the flames, but this is not the case for forest fires.

“We usually have to search for a water source which could be one or two kilometres away. Different techniques are used to douse wildfires, such as water-bombing, total flooding, direct attacks and trenching.”

Wan Mohd Nor said forest fires take several hours and in extreme cases, such as peat fires — where the root of the fire is underground — fires could burn for months.

He said regardless of the risk involved, the first course of action is to locate and rescue victims.

“We try to extinguish the fire quickly because we want to prevent the smoke from spreading as it is hazardous.

“Our priority is to save lives,” he said.

Based on a Meteorological Department forecast, the heatwave, which began in January, is expected to last until June.