According to local officials, more than 300 personnel have been brought in to fight a fire on the iconic Mount Kilimanjaro’s slopes in Tanzania, with police and locals assisting firemen.
At a height of around 4,000 meters, on the mountain’s southern side, the fire was raging close to the Camp Karanga location utilized by climbers to scale the peak.
Africa’s highest peak, Mount Kilimanjaro, is located in the northeast of the continent at a height of 5,895 meters (19,340 feet).
The cause of the fire has not yet been determined by authorities, but it occurred exactly two years after another blaze that burned 95 square kilometers for a week in October 2020. (37 square miles).
No one was killed in that fire, and on Saturday, authorities declared that none of the mountain’s visitors were in danger from the current fire. Both mountain climbers and trekkers like climbing Kilimanjaro.
Regional officials reported that the fire began on Friday night and expanded throughout the night due to heavy winds. How much ground it covered couldn’t yet be determined.
On Saturday, a jet carrying top TANAPA (Tanzania National Parks Authority) officials and local officials on a visit to assess the situation was unable to land.
“Large clouds and the smoke prevented us from reaching the fire zone,” the prefect of Kilimanjaro, Nurdin Babu, told journalists. “We will try again when the situation improves.”
Yahaya Mdogo, the regional police head, stated that they were concentrating on bringing the fire under control and were unable to yet estimate its size or the effect it was having on the populace.
Social media videos, however, appeared to show the fires consuming vegetation and spewing up huge clouds of gray smoke.
Police, firefighters, local university students, and even tour operator employees were putting out a lot of effort to put out the fire, according to a brief statement from TANAPA.
With its snow-capped peak, Mount Kilimanjaro is well-known worldwide.
UNESCO has listed Kilimanjaro National Parks as a World Heritage Site in part because of the numerous endangered species that call the park’s surrounding forests home.
