Small island villagers in Papua New Guinea are appealing for international help to fight wildfires, which they say have burned through one-third of their land.
As winter turns to spring under El NiƱo drought conditions, bushfires are battering communities all over PNG, with local fire and response teams often powerless to fight it.
In Manus Province, Lou Island has battled wildfires for the past week, in what locals call an “unprecedented” disaster.
Ngenge Sasa, from Rei village in the island’s north, told RNZ Pacific that the impact has been devastating.
Speaking from a high vantage point, he said at least one third of the island appeared scorched and flat, and that an entire forest appeared to have vanished.
“It’s a clean sweep,” he said.
“On the Eastern side … all the trees that we use for building our houses, the roads and some of the gardens, all our resources have gone. This is one of the only forests that all of the island used for sawn timber.”
He said the fire seemed to have tempered by around 7am local time, with smoke visible on the southern end, after it had spread island-wide the day before.
“It’s the first kind of fire that islanders have experienced in their life.”
Kireni Sparks-Ngenge, a fellow coordinator, said locals have relied on whatever they had lying around to fight the fire, but it was nowhere near enough.
“Community members have been working tirelessly, risking their own safety, to try to kill the fire, but latest reports say that the spread of the fire is out of their control,” she said.
“We believe that the best equipment to put out this wildfire would be monsoon buckets, but have yet to find anyone who has and will deploy this equipment urgently.
“Other critical support could include assessing fire boundaries and coordinating containment lines, and use of high volume water pumps directly onto active fire.”
Sasa said re-enforcements from Manus Island arrived yesterday, with firefighters up until 3am, while locals island-wide kept up their efforts.
“There’s people from all around Lou Island, they’re all coming today. Everybody will get one litre, two litres, five litres of water, and walk up to the mountains and try to killed the remaining fire now.
“But big damage has been done to our traditional land. These forests here were untouched forests from our great grandparents… now it’s all gone on this side.
“There’s another mainly garden forest on the Northern side, I think it’s okay.”
