Bhubaneswar: Chief Secretary Suresh Chandra Mahapatra Tuesday directed district administrations and all concerned departments to work 24×7 to control forest fires in the state.
The Chief Secretary Tuesday morning had a review meeting on the forest fire situation with all the District Collectors, Superintendents of Police (SPs) and Divisional Forest Officers (DFOs) through videoconferencing.
He directed district-level functionaries to take all-out efforts for abatement of wild fires and prevent their proliferation by intensifying night patrolling and attending fire alerts received in quickest possible time.
Mahapatra instructed the officials to work 24×7 in accordance with the standard operating procedure and be more attentive to attend forest fires noticed in hilly terrains, involve members from the Panchayati Raj Institutions and local community to handle the situation.
As directed by the Chief Minister, the Odisha Disaster Rapid Action Force (ODRAF) teams comprising 50 personnel have been engaged to render assistance to abate the forest fire in Similipal Tiger Reserve, said Sandeep Tripathi, head of the state task force formed to control forest fires.
In order to tackle the situation in an effective way, the state government has decided to engage more manpower and equipment. It has been decided to put additional 100 squads on top of 600 different squads.
Each squad comprises 10 persons and a vehicle. Besides, additional 700 blowers are being procured for this purpose, he said.
Further, Tripathi said, it has been decided to incentivise 3,000 Forest Fringe Villages to take action to prevent occurrence of forest fire and prevent its proliferation in the fringe villages and involve the VSSs/EDCs to contain the ongoing forest fire menace.
The government has also appealed to PRI members to mobilise their human resources to sensitise forest’s fringe localities to prevent intentional and unintentional fires. In different areas, action has already been initiated by local DFOs to dissuade locals on the forest fringes from burning agricultural wastes in the open.
Such fires once left unattended cause forest fires. The villagers were asked to put water tankers, wherever feasible, to use to abate the ongoing fire.
Due to continuous and quick action by field staff, the number of fire points has shown a considerable decrease as fire alerts have come down to 3,258 (March 8) from 6,258 (March 7), Tripathi claimed.
Asked about the status of fire incident in Similipal area, he said about 14.15 hectares of forest area in south north and 6.1 hectares of south divisions of Similipal have been affected by the fire.
However, more than 95 per cent of fire points have been attended to during last 24 hours. No damage to wild life or human has been reported by the field staff, he added.
PNN