By : Shrishti Mehra
According to official statistics, 113 forest fires occurred in Uttarakhand between April 23 and April 25. There were 46 fires recorded on April 23, 13 on April 24, and 54 on April 25.
Two Nepalese laborers died in a forest fire in Uttarakhand’s Almora district on Friday, while two others were injured, officials said.
The workers were taken to Sushila Tiwari Hospital in Haldwani, Nainital district, after suffering between thirty and forty percent of their injuries from burns, according to officials. Deepak Pujara and Gyaneshwar Bahadur have been recognized as the deceased.
Deepak Kumar, Almora divisional forest officer (DFO), stated that four individuals contracted by a private person to extract leesa were trapped in a forest fire in the van panchayat area. Both of them perished. Deepak Pujara died on the spot. Gyaneshwar Bahadur, the second victim, died while receiving treatment at night. The other two victims are out of danger. They received 30-40% burn injuries.”
For more than two weeks, several districts in the state have been dealing with forest fires, which have destroyed hectares of forest land. On Thursday, the state recorded 43 forest fires, with 33 in Kumaon.
According to Nishant Verma, the state’s nodal officer for forest fires, forest fires have damaged over 1000 hectares of forest land in the recent six months.
Verma reported that 315 complaints had been lodged in “man-made” forest fire events. “There are 52 named in these cases and 267 unknown” , he went on to say.
Last week, Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami met with Kumaon Division officials to examine the forest fire situation and issued directions to tackle the blaze.
Dhami stated that the officials responsible for the state’s forest fires would face consequences.
Between April 23 and 25, 113 forest fires were reported in Uttarakhand, according to official data. On April 23, 46 fires were reported; 13 on April 24, and 54 on April 25. In just three days, more than 139.63 hectares of woodland were devastated.
The state had the most significant forest fires between April 25 and May 2, according to Forest Survey of India data.
Moreover, FSI data shows that Uttarakhand recorded 3,768 fire alerts, second highest in the nation behind Odisha.
Since November 1 of last year until Thursday, 804 forest fire occurrences have been reported in the state, causing about 1011.3 hectares of forest land to be damaged, according to Verma. The Garhwal region lost 362.23 hectares of land, while the Kumaon region lost 574.6 hectares and the administrative wildlife regions lost 74.43 hectares.