Fighting poor visibility due to thick plumes of smoke, three Mi 17 choppers of the IAF today dumped loads of water on forest fires raging for days in Nainital and Pauri districts in Uttarakhand.
As authorities claimed that the situation is gradually getting under control, latest satellite imagery of the forest fires has reported that the blaze has been extinguished in over 75 per cent of the affected area in the hill state.
The water sprinkling operations commenced today as part of efforts to douse the fires that has killed seven persons and destroyed 2,269 hectares of forested land. The fire has also spread to sparsely populated remote hill areas
"With three IAF choppers sprinkling thousands of litres of water over affected areas in Nainital and Pauri districts and over 10,000 personnel of NDRF, SDRF, PRD, forest guards and homeguards engaged in fire fighting operations on the ground we can say the situation is very much under control," Additional Chief Secretary S Ramaswamy told PTI.
Choppers in Nainital are lifting water in bamby buckets from Bhimtal lake while the one at Pauri is collecting water from Shrinagar dam.
Besides fighting the flames, active fire spots are also being identified with the help of satellite data so that the choppers can rush straight to the spot and take corrective steps speedily, he said.
"We have been informed that fresh images from satellite have shown that the effective area under fire in Uttarakhand has come down to 110-115 locations from the earlier about 427. It is expected that these figures will be brought down to 50-60 in the next few days by the combined forces fighting to douse the jungle fire," NDRF Director General OP Singh told PTI in Delhi.
As the Centre's handling of the forest fires came under attack from the Congress, Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar said the government was taking the incident "very seriously" and making all efforts to control it.
"Government is taking the forest fires of Uttarakhand very seriously. 6,000 people have been deployed for fighting it. We also granted Rs 5 crore to the state yesterday," he said.
Taking on the Centre, Congress' Chief Spokesman Randeep Surjewala said, "while the Modi government is fuelling political crisis in a peaceful state, it has miserably failed to tackle a major environmental tragedy."
Every chopper has a capacity to sprinkle 3,000 litres of water in one sortie and the three together must not have made less than ten sorties during the day covering large areas, Principal Conservator of Forest B P Gupta said.
Home Minister Rajnath Singh reviewed the situation in Delhi and held discussions with chief secretary and other officials of Uttarakhand government. He also offered all assistance from the Centre.
