On Jan 10th, the director-general level conference on forestry fire counterplan was held, supervised by the Minister of Agriculture and Forestry.


According to the research by Korea Forest Service on the late 5 years’ forest fire situations, there has been a tendency that fires are caught often especially in January.


"Forest fires have occurred frequently since the beginning of this year and noticeably, the frequency of forest fires in Jan has increased."






Korea Forest Service convened the urgent conference at the briefing room in Ulsan at 3p.m. on Jan 10th. The discussion was about lookout for fires, thorough control system, initial action for fire control, integrated conducting system on fire sites. Due to a lack of putting out remaining fires, night fires reoccurred so the measure for night fires was discussed at the conference as well. Korea Forest Service set the fire precaution period in spring from February 1st to May 31st and from November 1st to December 15th in fall and expanded the period flexibly and practically in accordance with regional conditions. KFS has driven forward the counterplan on fire helicopter and fire ranger arrangement in forest fire-frequently-occurred districts.






According to the research in the late 5 years’ forest fires, overall the rate of forest fire has lessened by 27.9%, compared to the preceding period except for 2004. However, the fire rate in winter season, Dec. Jan. and Feb. has increased and the fire rate in January has soared by 61.4% on the average except for 2003.






In the last 5 years the frequency of forest fire seemed to go up and forests caught fire eighteen times to date, Jan 9th.






There was a tendency that forest fires occurred mainly in spring, but recently, fires have been caught frequently in Jan. KFS understands that the cause of this changed tendency is dry weather that resulted from unusual changes in the weather but predicts cautiously that the cause might be arson because 25 out of 93 fires from November to Jan 8th happened at night.






The frequency rate of fires analyzed by day is 19% the highest on Sun, 13% on Wednesday and 13% on Monday and the frequency rate by time in a day is 46% from 2p.m. to 6p.m. and 37% from 11a.m. to 1p.m. The number of cases by region is 89 cases in Gyeongbuk province, 55 in Jeonnam, and 53 in Gangwon and the figure of damaged areas in scale order is 5,063ha in Gangwon province ,702ha in Chungbuk and 234ha in Gyeongbuk.






Lee Kyong-il, Director of Forest Fire Control Division urged "There is no certain period of fire caution. At present it is well-known that unusual changes in the weather cause forest fire, flood, earthquake and earth-shock, and forest fire can be caught everywhere at any time. Therefore, we should make a mental note to take precautions against natural disasters."

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