A report titled Forest Fire Disaster Management, prepared by the National Institute of Disaster Management, a body under the Ministry of Home Affairs, in 2012, said about half of India’s forests were prone to fires.
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The Indian government sent Air Force helicopters to drop water on the blazes covering almost 23 square kilometres of pine forests. On Sunday, 6,000 labourers were deployed for firefighting.
The fires broke out a month ago, but intensified in recent days with more than 400 burning simultaneously.
“In the Uttarakhand calamity, the Prime Minister’s office and the interior minister worked in tandem and we got help from the Defence Ministry, the NDRF (National Disaster Response Force) and our officials from the forest department, who were over 6000, have been battling there.
Maximum number of fires are reported from the Pine forests in the state.
While Javadekar refused to comment on the extent of involvement of timber mafia behind the massive fire, he said probe has been ordered and culprits will be brought to book.
Since February, almost 1,000 separate incidents of forest fire – which usually occur in the summer – have been reported in the state. Forest department sources said that nearly all the fires in the state seem to have been man made but they are the worst in the last four years that the state has witnessed. “Most of the fire-related cases are from the Shivalik ranges in Bilaspur, Hamirpur, Kangra, Solan and Sirmaur districts and a majority of them are ground fires”. The Hindu, however, could confirm only three arrests, with B.P. Gupta, the nodal officer for forest fires in Kumaon and Garhwal regions, saying that two of those apprehended were from Nainital district and the third from Pithoragarh district.
Latest satellite imageries of Uttarakhand have reported that the forest fire has gone out in over 70 per cent of the affected areas, even as the NDRF has deployed over 130 personnel to tackle the massive blaze.
Forest fires are natural during summer but this time they have occurred on a bigger scale as the fire season which normally begins by February 15 and ends by June 15, began on February 2.
In the Lok Sabha, two MPs cited reports of a half-dozen deaths in the fires over the past few days, but Union home minister Rajnath Singh refused to confirm this.
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“Only 40 fires are active in the state today in comparison with yesterday’s 73, which is encouraging”, the state’s additional chief secretary (forest), S. Ramaswamy, said.
