The Ministry of Public Security has tasked the Hanoi Fire Police Department with buying helicopters for use in fire extinguishing and rescue missions, an official said.

Hoang Quoc Dinh, deputy director of the department, made this statement at a meeting with the media in Hanoi yesterday.

“After the fierce fire at the 33-storey twin towers of Hanoi-based Electricity Group of Vietnam’s Center for Telecommunications Information Management in mid-December 2011, Hanoi People’s Committee chairman Nguyen The Thao suggested that helicopters be purchased for this purpose. The department then sent a proposal to the ministry, which approved the idea,” Dinh said.

However, some issues must be resolved to make the use of helicopters for this purpose a success, Dinh said.

“The budget for buying fire fighting helicopters is large enough to afford them, but the main problems are how to effectively operate, maintain and store these vehicles, since fire-extinguishing forces have yet to be trained in these fields so far,” Dinh explained.

Therefore, there should be an appropriate road map for using helicopters to extinguish fires, and the ministry has also assigned the department to make such a road map soon, he said.

In the past eight months, 159 fires and explosions have occurred in Hanoi, killing 6 people, injuring 24 others, and causing a loss of about VND40 billion (US$1.92 million) in property, Hanoi fire authorities reported.

Compared to the same period last year, the number of fires increased by 4, the death toll climbed by 1 and the number of injured people rose by 10, the report said.