As summer sets in, western region faced with burning issue

April 21, 2016 12:00 am | Updated 05:48 am IST

he number of fire calls attended by the fire and rescues services department in the nine districts in the Western Region has gone up by two-and-a-half times in the month to March compared to January this year.

Department sources said that at least 70 per cent of the fires were bush fires. Sadly, most of them were due to human influence and negligence.

According to statistics from the department, 351 fires were reported in the region in January. This increased to 665 in February and 899 in March. Department sources said that this was an annual phenomenon.

“Foliage gets dried up during the cold climate in December and January. Soaring temperatures in the next two months facilitate flames,” Joint Director of Fire Services M. Shahul Hameed said.

“The number of fires stabilising in April and start dropping in May with the onset of the South West Monsoon,” District Fire Officer, S.R. Chandran, said. He said that number of fire calls start coming down early if there are summer showers.

“But over the past few weeks the extremely hot temperature only fuelled the fire,” he added.

Coimbatore district topped the list with most number of fire calls in March (182), followed by Tirupur (137), Salem (117) and Dindigul (107). The fires put off were lesser in Krishnagiri (66) and Dharmapuri (40) districts. Erode was the only district that recorded a marginal drop in number of fires in March, compared to February.

Department sources said that the personnel are over worked due to the shortage of manpower by nearly 40 to 50 per cent in most of the districts in this region. “We are temporarily shifting personnel from districts with comparatively lesser fire calls and manageable manpower to the districts that get more such calls,” an officer said.

The officer added that existing manpower is also forced to stretch their working hours in cases of emergency.

A senior officer in the fire and rescue service department said that the zone witnessed a steady drop in the number of fire calls over the last three calendar years. In 2013, the department attended 5,062 fire calls. It dropped to 4,720 in 2014 and 4,180 in 2015.

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