Forest fire occurs at several places in Rajouri

Rajouri, June 14:  Several incidents of forest fire have taken place during last four days in areas of Rajouri district causing widespread damage to forest.

In Keri sector on Line of Control, the fire fighters from Fire and Emergency Services Department, Jammu and Kashmir Forest Department, Forest Protection Force struggled hard to control flames amid dense smoke making poor visibility as well as causing severe respiratory distress.

Assistant Director Forest Protection Force, Masued Ahmed said that since Tuesday, atleast seven major incidents of forest fire have taken place in the border district areas causing damage to green gold.

He said that these incidents have taken place in areas of Manjakote, Rajouri, Kalakote and Nowshera tehsils with major fire incidents were in Challas area, Line of Control Keri area and Gambhir.

" We struggled hard to control the fire as there was dryness in forest bed and flames caused immense smoke and it was like a nightmare for staff working there," he said adding that fire fighting operations are launched whenever information of any fire incident is received.

Regarding causes of these incident, the officer of Forest Protection Force termed human acts as causes of all the incidents.

" Natural fire is a rare event in pine tree forest but this year we have found no such incident in which fire is caused by natural reasons father in all the incident cause are human who set to fire the forest for their gain of green grass," he further said.

Fire Station Officer Rajouri, Maqbool Hussain told that the Fire and Emergency Services Department responds to every single fire incident and fire tenders are rushed where road is nearer and fire tender can reach.

Hussain further said that a recent major fire incident took place near LoC in Keri in which several acres of forest area came under fire.