Odisha forest fire
Odisha govt deploys more manpower, equipment to abate forest fire across state
Bhubaneswar/UNI: Odisha government has decided to engage more manpower, equipment and initiated a lot of measures to check and contain the ongoing forest fire in the state.
Official sources said an additional 100 squads, beyond 600 different squads were deployed to control the forest fire.
Each squad comprises 10 persons and a vehicle. This apart an additional 700 blowers are being procured to put into work.
The government decided to incentivise 3000 Forest Fringe Villages to take action to prevent the occurrence of Forest Fire and prevent its proliferation in their forests fringe village.
The VSSs and EDCs would be involved to contain the ongoing forest fire menace.
The state government has urged the PRI institutions to mobilise their human resource to sensitise the forest fringe localites to prevent intentional and unintentional fire.
The state government has already constituted a task force headed by former Principal Chief Conservator of Forest Sandeep Tripathy to review forest fires on a daily basis, find out the causes and take immediate measures to contain the fire.
Meanwhile, the state government today appealed to the local people to cooperate with the forest staff to abate forest fire.
Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik also decided to engage ODRAF team to render assistance to abate the forest fire all over the state. ODRAF teams have already reached Similipal Tiger Reserve.
Chief Secretary S C Mohapatra Tuesday reviewed the forest fire situation in the state with all the district collectors, superintendents of police and divisional forest officers.
Mohapatra directed all the concerned district level functionaries to take all-out effort for the abatement of the forest fire.
The officials were asked to intensify night patrolling, attend fire alerts received in the quickest possible time and attend to forest fire noticed in hilly terrains to prevent its further proliferation.
They were also asked to involve the PRI institutions and local VSSs/ EDCs to handle the situation.
Sources said in different areas action has already been initiated by local DFOs to dissuade forest fringe locals to burn the agricultural wastes in open, which causes forest fire threat once left unattended and where ever feasible put water tankers in to use to abate the ongoing fire.
Due to continuous and quick action of the field staff, the number of fire points has shown a considerable decrease as fire alerts have come down from 6258 on March 7 to 3258 on March 8.
The government claimed that more than 95 per cent of fire points located have been abated or attended during the last 24 hours of reporting.
There has been no damage to wildlife and casualty as reported by the field staff.
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