Fire burns 2.42 hectares at FRIM’s Bidor research site

A forest fire broke out Monday evening near a research station in Bidor, Perak. The blaze hit land belonging to the Forest Research Institute of Malaysia, known as FRIM. About 2.42 hectares burned before firefighters brought it mostly under control.

The Perak Fire and Rescue Department received the call at 5.42pm. A team from the Bidor Fire and Rescue Station rushed to the site and began fighting the fire soon after.

This was not just any patch of forest. FRIM’s Bidor site was purpose-built decades ago to rehabilitate old tin-mining land, using tree planting to bring life back to ground the mining industry had stripped bare.

How the FRIM Bidor fire was fought

Firefighters used a 700-foot jet stream to attack the blaze. Sixteen firemen worked the site, led by operation commander Mohammad Munadi Omar. By midnight, they had brought about 85% of the affected area under control.

The operation paused there, but not because the fire had beaten them. JBPM assistant operations director Sabarodzi Nor Ahmad said the team halted work at midnight for safety reasons, after confirming the fire would not spread further overnight.

Crews returned to finish the job at around 8am Tuesday. The remaining 15% of the burned area still needed mopping up, a routine final stage once the main blaze is under control.

As of Tuesday morning, the fire is largely contained. Officials have not reported any injuries or threats to nearby structures throughout the incident.

Not just any patch of forest

FRIM’s Bidor Research Station sits on land the Perak state government handed over in 1996. Back then, it was 121.4 hectares of tin tailings, the leftover slime and sand from decades of tin mining in the area.

The station’s whole purpose is rehabilitation. Researchers there study how to green degraded mining land using pioneer tree species like Muntingia calabura, Vitex pubescens and various Mallotus species, plants tough enough to take root where mining left the soil poor.

This site is one of nine field research stations FRIM runs across Malaysia. Others focus on teak plantations, dipterocarp hill forest management, and long-term forest ecology, each tailored to a different research problem.

Whether the fire disrupted any active research plots at the Bidor site is not yet clear. What is clear is that a fire here burns through applied land-rehabilitation work, not simply trees, since the whole station exists to prove degraded land can be brought back to life.