After several days of fighting the flames, one of the two large forest fires reported in the Pinar del Río municipality of San Juan y Martínez is already extinguished and the other is under control.
Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Pereda Burón, head of the Ranger Corps (CGB) in Pinar del Río, explained to Granma that around 70 men remained at the time of writing in the area known as Maquina Vieja, to ensure that the fire did not spread again.
Preliminary calculations estimate that about 385 hectares (ha) were affected, mainly semi-deciduous forests and pine, acacia and eucalyptus plantations.
Meanwhile, the incident recorded in the Agua Dulce area covered 156 hectares of pine forests, and is now extinguished.
With them, the area of forests that have been prey to forest fires (79 in total) during 2024 rises to around 1,200 hectares.
The vast majority of them were caused by man’s negligence, said the head of the CGB and warned that the danger of this type of events has not ended.
We have municipalities like Sandino and San Juan y Martínez in which it has not yet rained and conditions of extreme drought remain, he said, so it is necessary to avoid the irresponsible use of fire and actions such as the burning of crop residues that later have serious consequences. consequences from an economic and environmental point of view.
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