President Pranab Mukherjee expressed concern on Monday over the forest fires in Uttarakhand that gutted vast Himalayan jungles as police arrested four villagers for allegedly starting blazes.
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The Army, the Indian Air Force, three teams of the National Disaster Relief Force, and 6,000 firefighters have been working round the clock to douse massive forest fires in the hill states of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh. “The director general of forests has been stationed in Uttarakhand for the past two days to monitor the fire-fighting operations and he had a meeting with local officials to prepare the next plan of action”.
Officials said the forests are spread across six districts, but the districts are isolated and that “we are getting them under control”.
State disaster management department said the situation will be brought under control soon as firefighting is taking place on a war footing. By Tuesday, 1,591 fires had been recorded, covering 3,466 hectares.
“This (forest fire) is an annual affair but no one is doing anything”.
But the rushed-in fire tenders calmed the burning forests in two hours. The NDRF team in Uttarakhand is being supported by nearly 10,000 staff of the different departments to put out the wildfire. They added that such seasonal fires were common and that several had been put out in the neighbourhood forests in recent weeks.
“We want to know the cause of fire”, the bench said. Officials said that they were also looking into incidents of fire in areas through which railway lines like the 113-year-old Shimla-Kalka toy train corridor pass.
The trial run of generating pre-fire alerts was also started by the Centre on Sunday, stated the Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Prakash Javadekar. “I have discussed the fire issue with officials at the Centre and took stock of the situation there (in Uttarakhand) and directed officials on the measures that need to be taken”, he told ANI.
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Two air force Mi-17 helicopters made nine sorties from Nainital and Pauri and poured buckets of water over the flaming forests. The Trinamool Congress leader Saugata Roy gave an adjournment notice in the Lok Sabha demanding a discussion on the current situation of the wildfire in Uttarakhand.
