Villagers, NRIs chip in for firefighting system

Kaddon (Doraha): To check crop blazes and fire incidents, residents of this village have got a firefighting machine of their own with the help of NRIs. Villagers and around 20 NRIs, who have formed NGO Nishkam Sewa Society for various development works, raised money for the machine.
Parminder Singh, village head, said there have been fire incidents in fields during crop harvesting season and farm machinery also catches flames. He said the fire safety department has tenders at Khanna, which is around 15 km from here, so they thought instead of waiting they should buy one themselves.

“Last year, a fire had engulfed 15 to 20 acres and we had to extinguish it by throwing water from buckets. The firefighting system cost us Rs 1.7 lakh. It is a tractor-operated system with 5,000-litre water tank fitted with a pump. It draws power from the tractor. There are two water pipes fitted with the system and these measure around 100 feet and 200 feet. The pipes can spray water to a distance of 50 metres. The tractor-driven machine can reach where a fire tender cannot,” he said.

“Now we can also control fires in houses, though these are not common in the village. Besides, this system is being used to water around a thousand saplings planted by villagers to increase green cover,” said Bharpur Singh, who was part of the team that doused last year’s fire in the village fields. He added that the system had three taps behind the tank, which was used for drinking water during religious functions.

The villagers said they have a large number of tractors with which the system was compatible and there were a number of volunteers trained to use it. “We have around one-lakh-litre water capacity tank in the village from where we draw water. The best part of this system is that the water is filled in a few minutes, so we can quickly respond to fire incidents,” said Surjeet Singh, an elderly farmer. He added that they were thankful to NRIs and other villagers for contributing to the facility.

The NRIs, meanwhile, said they were doing their bit for their village.

“We feel happy that the village has a firefighting system. We want our village to have best facilities,” said Gurdeep Singh, an NRI from Surrey, Canada.