Himachal starts forest fire safety campaign :

Chief Secretary B.K. Agarwal launched forest fire safety campaign from the state Secretariat to be undertaken for nine days across the state.

• Under the campaign, four teams of the forest publicity division would aware the general public on different routes about the safety of forests from the forest fires.
• Speaking on the occasion, the Chief Secretary said that the awareness programmes would be organised in 64 forest ranges through Nukkar Nataks, exhibitions and distributing publicity material on preventing the forest fires.
• The local communities, non-government organisations and departments concerned would be included in the forest fire fighting force.
• Presently there were 13500 members of rapid forest fire fighting force in the state.
• Chief secretary appealed to the people of the state to give their active support for preventing the forest fires which causes heavy loss to the natural resources and human property as well.
• Every year, forest property worth crores destroyed in the forest fire. Animal, birds are the worst hit by the forest fire. The state government has so far failed to check the forest fire, however negligence and lack of proper forest management are the main reason behind the forest fire. The Forest Department has mooted to set up 25 units for making briquettes out of highly inflammable pine needles which will be sold to the cement industry as an alternate fuel.
• The department has prepared the state policy for use of pine needles which will ensure involvement of mahila mandals, panchayati raj bodies, yuvak clubs and voluntary organizations. A Faridabad-based company is providing the machinery as per the design and technology prepared by IIT Mandi experts.

Problem with pine :

In summer when pine trees shed their leaves, covering large chunk of open land within forests. With summer temperature already hovering in mid-30s, the pine needles take hardly three to four hours to get completely dry. These heaps of needles become highly inflammable and easily catch fire. However, there is another facet to it: the practice of waste burning by the communities living in the vicinity of these forests.

In absence of a proper waste collection and disposal system, the communities find it convenient to burn their waste. Although they keep a watch and stand close to the burning garbage, embers often burst out to nearby forests, triggering a massive fire .

The forest department has been planting pine saplings in the region for the past few decades due to high survival rate of the tree. There are 27,910 hectares of pine forests in the Dharamshala circle, which comprises 20 per cent of the total forest area in that circle. However, these trees create problems for the forest department as well as the native farmers.

As pine trees produce biochemicals that do not allow any kind of vegetation to grow, the forest department does controlled burning of pine forests to ensure there is growth of grass during monsoon months and animal fodder is available. The villagers, at times, take this exercise upon themselves and set these needles on fire, which slowly spreads beyond their control. Recently, a cabinet meeting was held to explore possibilities of making commercial use of pine needles.

Experts say that there is technology available to convert these pine needles into combustible bricks.

Closer to the capital city, Kasauli has already been reeling under high maximum temperature. It has also witnessed a massive forest fire in area around the Air Force Station. A helicopter was pressed into service by the defence authorities on May 26 to douse the flames. Despite suffering from depleting water levels, water had to be sourced from the Sukhana Lake in Chandigarh to douse the fire.

Scorching summer in the hills :

While pine trees are the principal culprit, a part of the blame also goes to extremely high summer temperature prevailing in the region in the last few days. Heat wave conditions continued unabated in the lower hills of Himachal Pradesh, with Una registering the hottest temperature at 43.6 degrees Celsius. Maximum departure from normal temperatures in most districts has been high.