UP govt on high alert to check forest fires during upcoming summer
The government is running a 'Forest Fire Safety Week' from February 1 to February 7 across the state to raise public awareness about fire prevention measures.
The government is running a 'Forest Fire Safety Week' from February 1 to February 7 across the state to raise public awareness about fire prevention measures.
The State has registered as many as 533 forest fire cases in the last week, which is the highest forest fire case across the country with 76 incidents on average every day.
The NDRF DG said the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) recently gave the responsibility to his force to form a special team to deal with forest fire incidents, a key issue in forested regions across the country that includes states such as Uttarakhand, Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.
As many as 5,280 forest fires were reported from November 2021 to June 2022, which saw a rise from 4,110 in November 2020 to June 2021. This is a significant rise from 536 fires reported from November 2019 to June 2020 and is an all-time high forest fires in the last three years.
"We won't know for sure until an official announcement is made, but this year many forest fires have started at the same time in many different areas, which may be caused by arson," Aydin Tufekcioglu
The entire ecology and even geography of ecologically sensitive regions may be changed entirely within a few decades, without much care or concern for the destructive impacts of such changes.
Setting up fire to the forests is a punishable offence of punishment of 2 years or a fine of Rs 5000 or both.
"The QRT would be deployed in 80 forest fire sensitive Forest Ranges in the state in addition to forest staff," said Himachal Pradesh Chief Secretary BK Agarwal.
Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur on Saturday directed the Forest department to work with more zeal and dedication for enhancing…
Heavy rainfall in different parts of Uttarakhand on Friday night helped in completely extinguishing forest fires in the hill state.…
