THE State Council, China’s Cabinet, has dispatched a high-level steering group to Sichuan Province to guide a campaign that aims to curb the high incidence of deadly forest fires there.

Headed by Huang Ming, Party chief of the Ministry of Emergency Management, the group is the first of its kind established for forest and prairie fire control work in a provincial-level region, the ministry said in a news release.

Fu Jianhua, deputy director of the office of the State Council’s Work Safety Committee, is executive deputy head of the group, which also includes three other senior officials as deputy heads, including Li Shuming, deputy head of the National Forestry and Grassland Administration.

“The campaign is being launched in response to the urgent demand to address loopholes in forest and prairie fire prevention and control work in Sichuan province,” Huang told a conference in Chengdu, Sichuan’s provincial capital, on Thursday.

The southwestern province has hit the headlines twice for major deadly forest fires in the past 14 months. In March last year, a forest blaze claimed 31 lives in the province’s Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, including 27 firefighters.

About a year later, on March 31, another raging forest fire in the prefecture killed 19 firefighters and seriously injured three others.

On Thursday, the prefecture’s emergency management authority dispatched firefighters to battle another forest fire that started at around 5 p.m. that day.

(China Daily)