Illegal outdoor fires continue to occur in Mae Hong Son province despite the ban and the raging smog crisis.
In recent months, Mae Hong Son has been struggling with haze most of the time. Exposure to serious air pollution has become a threat to the health of locals.
THE HUGE FIRE, which this week turned Doi Jorakhe into an inferno and destroyed more than 1,000 rai (160 hectares) of forestland, has been contained with most hot spots put out, deputy governor Narong Rojjanasothorn said yesterday.
However, the battles against wildfires will continue elsewhere in Chiang Rai, which still suffers from 380 hotspots, Narong said after meeting with the Doi Jorakhe special coordination center for fighting forest fires, located at Wat Pateung in Mae Chan district.
Forest fires have damaged more than 2.6 million rai of land in nine northern provinces, the Mae Hong Son forest fire and haze control center said on Friday.
Citing a satellite image report by Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency, the center said that during January 1- March 16, 2,680,634 rai of land was destroyed in wildfires.
All nine northern provinces, including Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai, on Thursday morning, cited dangerous levels of PM2.5 – airborne particulates 2.5 microns or less in diameter.
PEOPLE in the North are burdened by additional costs to cope with the ongoing haze crisis even as more forest fires erupted in some areas yesterday.
A Nida Poll survey of 1,253 respondents who lived in nine northern provinces and encountered the haze on April 4 to 5, found that nearly 57 percent of them had to bear additional costs to protect themselves from the pollution. It was not revealed how much more they had to spend. About 43.10 percent said they did not have to spend
(The Nation/ANN)-VISITING CHIANG MAI on Tuesday, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha issued an order to end the haze crisis in the North within seven days, alongside declaring it part of the national agenda.
However, environmental groups like Greenpeace are saying that such an unprecedented short-term directive would do little to resolve what has become a persistent crisis requiring serious long-term measures.
SAMOENG, Thailand: Under a shroud of thick, black smoke, the hill is ablaze.
Men in red uniforms snake through a burning forest in single file, searching for the source of the ferocious fire that has engulfed a large part of the hill in Samoeng district of western Chiang Mai – a northern Thai province that recently reported the worst air quality in the world.
The Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency’s fire monitoring system, as of 2.42am, cited 275 hot spots in the region. The top five worst provinces were Mae Hong Son (114 hot spots), Chiang Mai (35), Lampang (35), Chiang Rai (33), and Phayao (20).