Fighting forest fires

Fighting forest fires

Context

The recent wildfire tragedy in Theni in Tamil Nadu, in which 20 trekkers lost their lives, once again brings into focus forest fires in India. Over the past few years, we have realised that these fires are not spontaneous; human beings set off fires. This tragedy raises several other issues — of approaches in fighting fires and ways of mitigating damage

What are the approaches to fight forest fires?

• Technological: Under this, helicopters or ground-based personnel spray fire retardant chemicals, or pump water to fight the blaze. These are expensive methods and make sense when one is protecting a human community, but are usually not practised in India
• Containing the fire in compartments: It is done via usage of natural barriers such as streams, roads, ridges, and fire lines along hillsides or across plains. A fire line is a line through a forest which has been cleared of all vegetation. The width depends on the type of forest being protected. Once the blaze has burnt out all combustibles in the affected compartment, it fizzles out and the neighbouring compartments are saved
• Setting a counter fire: A counter fire is set, so that when a fire is unapproachable for humans, a line is cleared of combustibles and manned. One waits until the wildfire is near enough to be sucking oxygen towards it, and then all the people manning the line set fire to the line simultaneously. The counter fire rushes towards the wildfire, leaving a stretch of burnt ground. As soon as the two fires meet, the blaze is extinguished
• Beating the fire out: The most practical and most widely used approach, is to have enough people with leafy green boughs to beat the fire out. This is practised in combination with fire lines and counter fires

Dangers associated with firefighting

• Asphyxiation: The real danger is asphyxiation, since a vast quantity of smoke is generated, and the lack of oxygen in the immediate vicinity of tall flames can cause breathlessness. Once a person loses consciousness due to asphyxiation, the danger of being burnt alive becomes real, especially if one is alone
• Dehydration is also an issue when fighting flames more than a meter high

What can still be done to mitigate the damage caused by forest fires? 

• Increasing the numberof firefighters: We need to vastly increase the number of firefighters
• Equipping firefighters with resources: We also need to equip firefighters properly with drinking water bottles, back-up supplies of food and water, proper shoes or boots, rakes, spades and other implements, light, rechargeable torches, and so on. They could also be paid better
• Utilising local help:Seasonal labour could be contracted during the fire season. With adequate training, they would serve to fill gaps along the line. Local villagers would be the best resource
• More Forest Department field staff could be hired to put out fires during the fire season and to patrol the forests during other times

Way forward

Increasing the field staff of Forest Departments by discontinuing the claimed ‘forest plantations’ would help control forest fires, which in turn would help rejuvenation of fire-stressed forest ecosystems. This would help indigenous forests grow back