Forest department struggles to douse wildfire

COIMBATORE: The forest department continued its efforts to put out a forest fire in the Madukkarai range of the Coimbatore forest division for the third consecutive day on Thursday.
The fire was detected in the Boluvampatti block -II reserve forest late Tuesday evening. A team comprising 40 members from the seven forest ranges has been working to extinguish the fire, which has been spreading downhill, where patches of trees and dried bamboo are present.
The rocky steep terrain is posing a big challenge to the personnel, district forest officer N Jayaraj said. “Our team is working to prevent fire from spreading downhill. The rocky portion is spread across 150 hectares. Grasses in 50 hectares were destroyed by Wednesday night. Rocks, carrying embers, are rolling downhill, setting fire to more areas,” he said.
Additional teams from the Nilgiris forest division were deployed on Thursday.
Though the teams managed to contain the fire by Thursday morning, it began to spread to the reserve forest later in the day, Jayaraj said. “As many as 90 frontline staff of the forest department have been deployed to extinguish the fire. They created fire lines and are using counterfire method.”
“We plan to send more teams to the hill on Friday morning to completely extinguish the fire,” the official added.
Meanwhile, fire and rescue services personnel brought two fire tenders to the foothills to prevent the spread of fire on Thursday. “Our teams trekked for three hours to reach the spot where the fire broke out. But they cannot reach the top of the steep hill,” said Madukkarai range officer P Santhya.
Coimbatore collector Kranthi Kumar Pati, who inspected the area on Thursday morning, instructed forest department officials to inform him if the department fails to contain the fire. In such a scenario, the administration plans to seek the help of the Indian Air Force that has helicopters fitted with Bambi Bucket to contain the blaze.