Three labourers were killed while another was injured while trying to douse a forest fire in Almora district of Uttarakhand, making it the first deaths this year in forest fires that have been raging in the hill state over the past fortnight, officials familiar with the matter said on Friday.
The incident occurred in Someshwar tehsil on Thursday evening, when the four labourers — two men and two women — employed by a private person to extract highly inflammable pine resin were trapped in the forest fire while trying to douse the flames, Almora divisional forest officer (DFO) Deepak Kumar said, adding the blaze spread fast on Thursday evening due to windy conditions in the area.
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“Four people who were employed by a private person for extracting leesa (pine resin) were trapped in the forest fire in the van (forest) panchayat area. Three of them died. One died on the spot, another died during treatment at Almora base hospital on Thursday night while the third victim, a woman, died during treatment at Sushila Tiwari Government Hospital at Haldwani in Nainital district during the day (on Friday),” Kumar said.
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These are the first deaths in forest fires in the hill state thus year, forest officials said.
Kumar said they could not find any identity cards on the labourers, all of whom are residents of a neighbouring village in Nepal. Based on the information provided by the employer, two of the deceased have been identified as Deepak Pujara and Gyaneshwar Bahadur, the DFO said, adding they are trying to ascertain the identity of the two women, one of whom is admitted at the Haldwani hospital.
A police case has been registered against unidentified people for setting the fire in the forest, he said.
“A case has been registered in the incident and we are trying to ascertain how the fire started in the forest. We have given a complaint to the police against unidentified people for setting the fire in the forest, based on which they have registered a first information report (FIR),” the senior officer added.
Resin, locally known as “Leesa”, is extracted from chir pine or longleaf Indian pine (Pinus roxburghii) trees — native to the Himalayas — and is used for making turpentine oil after distillation.
ALSO READ | Uttarakhand records highest number of large forest fires in India in last 7 days
Over the past two weeks, forest fires have been raging in Uttarakhand, especially in Kumaon region that includes Almora district where the first deaths have been reported from this year. The hill state reported 64 forest fire incidents on Friday — 30 in Garhwal, 29 in Kumaon and five in wildlife administrative region.
Over 1,000 hectares of forest land have been damaged in forest fires in the last six months, Nishant Verma, the nodal officer for forest fire incidents in the state, said.
“From November 1 last year till Friday evening, 868 incidents of forest fires have been reported in the state in which at least 1,085.9 hectares of forest land have been damaged. Of these, 616.02 hectares have been damaged in the Kumaon region, 390.1 hectares in the Garhwal region and 79.9 hectares in the administrative wildlife regions,” he said.
So far, 350 cases have been registered in “man-made” forest fire incidents against 58 named and 290 unidentified suspects, Verma added.
Uttarakhand has recorded the highest number of large forest fires in the country between April 25 and May 2, according to the data of the Forest Survey of India (FSI). The Himalayan state reported the highest 241 large forest fire incidents in that period, followed by Odisha (231), Chhattisgarh (36), Andhra Pradesh (83), and Jharkhand (79). In the same seven days, Uttarakhand also recorded 3,768 fire alerts, the second highest in the country, only behind Odisha, which recorded 3,769 alerts, according to FSI data.
