Kerala: Fire force wary of miscreants

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The forest ranges across the district heaved  a sigh of relief on Sunday as showers helped avoid the chance of forest fire in the high summer heat. However, the fire and rescue officials continue to be on their toes due to the fire in the plantations caused by anti-socials.

Last week,  a raging fire  destroyed eight acres and damaged around 60-acre pasture land at Manabur near Attingal. With most of these farmlands being inaccessible for tankers,  fire lines using bulldozers had to toil the whole day to prevent the fire from spreading to residential areas, said Attingal fire station officer Suresh Kumar.

Earlier last month, 44 acres of land near Sheela Estate, Nedumangaud,  also was set on fire by unidentified persons. “A total of 15 fire engines had to be rushed to prevent the fire from spreading to areas which had transformers and sensitive installations. Here also, fire lines were used. People set plantations on fire to save the labour cost in clearing the land of shrubs,” said an officer attached to Nedumangadu fire estate.

In both the cases,  there are no witnesses or local residents were hostile preventing the police from registering cases. As per forest officials, a special kind of pulse, ‘thoottapayaru’ that is cultivated along with other crops like tea become a fuel for most of the fires. It blazes quickly and the ash made by it is darker than normal ash.

“We take fire watchers on contract from February to May to prevent any kind of incidents in our areas. The concern has luckily got over as the rains came in,” said V.V. Vinod, Palode forest range officer.