Moshi. After three days of raging flames on Mt Kilimanjaro authorities have confirmed that over 28 square kilometers of vegetation has been destroyed by the fire so far.
Addressing media on Tuesday evening Tanapa’s commissioner for conservation Allan Kijazi said they had been successful in containing the fire and were expecting to put out the fire completely in the next 24 hours.
“The area that we are talking about is what has been destroyed so far but as you know the fire is still on therefore we shall release the total area that has been destroyed after we have put out the fire completely,” said Dr Kijazi.
He added: Right now we are concentrating our efforts on containment and trying to establish the real cause of the fire so that we can take the necessary steps in future.
Dr Kijazi is optimistic that within a short period of time the natural vegetation (moorlands) will be restored unless another fire breaks out.
He said the fire that broke out was different from other fires that they had experienced in the past because it was in the ridges posing a danger for firefighters.
The exercise of containing such flames depends on the type of fire and worse still this fire erupted in some of the key routes used by mountain climbers to go to the peak.
“In recent times we managed to put out such fires with ease because the area where the outbreak occurred made it easy to contain.”
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