Chairman of Region Five, Vickchand Ramphal yesterday disclosed that some $6m had to be expended to fight a recent bush fire along the shoreline in the region which is suspected to have been maliciously set.
The bush fire ran along the shoreline in sections of the Bath/Woodley Park and Union/Naarstigheid neighbourhood democratic councils, and according to Ramphal, approximately $6m was spent to extinguish the fire that raged for over seven days resulting in damage to mangroves along the shoreline.
The chairman explained, “We had to have two excavators and six tractor-driven pumps pump water into the area to flood part of it so as to prevent the fire from spreading. The excavators were used to dig channels from the sea dam going towards the Atlantic, in some areas it assisted in bringing in water from the sea bank.”