The Home Minister held discussions with chief secretary and other officials of the state government on the situation arising due to the forest fire and offered all assistance from the Centre. “Situation is under control now”, minister of state for home Kiren Rijiju told reporters in Delhi.
Advertisement
Two IAF helicopters made nine sorties from Nainital and Pauri and poured water out of Bamdi buckets over the flaming forests as 10,000 personnel fought numerous infernos on the ground. The areas to be most affected include Almora, Bageshwar, Nainital, Pauri, Chamoli, and Pithoragarh.
The fires, broken out at 1,200 locations in the densely forested Himalayan state, have so far not threatened towns in Uttarakhand, Rautela said.
Meanwhile, former chief minister Harish Rawat said that the situation is very worrisome here and there is need to focus on micro management.
Stating that the NDRF personnel and choppers were deployed for relief activity, Singh continued that there was no confirmation of any casualty. He said his ministry on Sunday began trial runs for a pre-fire alert system that will issue warnings via SMS about possible fire outbreaks in the country so that the forest department could attend to them immediately.
He also stated that direction for inclusion of forest fire prevention work under MGNREGA has also been given.
Despite the fire being contained in several parts of the hill state, the blaze is now spreading outside Uttarakhand and entering Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir.
Reasi district in Jammu and Kashmir is also battling a massive forest fire. The PMO has expressed concern at the forest fires and has asked the Governor (the state is now under President’s rule) to send a detailed report. Rudraprayag forest division is taking the army’s help for fire-fighting operations especially along the highways, Gupta said. Efforts to control fire blaze in large area is being carried on war footing. Usually done before summer season, the widespread fire has necessitated fire-line cutting.
Advertisement
Responding to the query, the counsel appearing for MoEF said that entire team of officials concerned was working on the issues and choppers of the Indian Air Force (IAF) have also been deployed in the ongoing firefighting operations.
