FSI fire alert system beamed information on Theni fire hours before state woke up

CHENNAI: On Sunday, at 11.20am, the phones of at least 200 forest officials beeped – it was an alert from the Forest Survey of India (FSI) whose remote sensing sensors had detected a “thermal anomaly” near Bodi in Theni. In the next three hours, two more alerts were sent by the Central organisation based in Dehradun. The warning was ignored.
It wasn’t until 4.30pm – five hours after the first alert – the state forest department finally reacted. M Mahendran, assistant conservator of forests in Bodinayakanur forest division of Theni, had received a call from the police saying trekkers had been caught in a blaze, 8km from his office. It took his team at least two hours to reach the spot after a steep climb.

The forest department was clearly caught napping when initial alerts were sent. “Every time there is a thermal anomaly, an automated email is sent to nodal forest officers in the state. The details are also immediately uploaded in FSI’s website,” said the organisation’s deputy director E Vikram, who heads the forest fire division. FSI beams these alerts based on information obtained from two remote sensing sensors – SNPP-VIIRS and MODIS – in three NASA satellites which provides thermal images. “We received the first set of information at 11.12am, and an email was sent to the nodal forest officer at 11.20am,” said another official attached to the forest fire cell. A second email was sent at 2.29pm and a third at 3.38pm. “Simultaneously, SMS alerts were sent to 18,400 registered users across the country, including 236 people in Tamil Nadu, mostly forest officers at the district and state levels,” said Vikram.

The state forest department’s GIS cell, refuted claims that there was delay in response to FSI’s alerts. “We had sent information to the district forest officer concerned when we got the initial alert,” he said. When TOI pointed that the first reaction from the forest official on the field came only at 4.30 the official could offer no explanation. Incidentally, Theni collector Pallavi Baldev called up the senior officials of revenue administration for defence assistance to rescue the trapped trekkers only at around 4.30pm.

Across the country, there has been an increase in the number of forest fire alerts in 2017, compared to 2016 – it went up from 15,937 to 35,888. Tamil Nadu, too, saw an increase from 95 to 301 during the same period. Most of these incidents happened from January to May.