20230324 Fire in private forest at Assagao
India Mar 24 2023 “Forest”
Dead : dead 0 or unknown Burnout : 0 or unknown Injured : injured 0 or unknown
Fire in private forest at Assagao
Updated: 2023-03-24
Panaji: A wildfire in two waddos of Assagao, including a private forest, on Thursday took fire-fighters more than threehours to douse.“With the whole area being hilly, we could not use fire tenders. We managed to douse the flames using fire beaters, small tree branches,” fire fighter Prashant Shetgaonkar told TOI.
The fire was spotted in the afternoon at Sakal waddo. It later spread to Mazal waddo, a hilly area with medium-to-dense vegetation that includes a private forest.
Shetgaonkar said they received a call at 1.50pm and arrived at the site with six firefighters.
While the cause of the fire remains unknown, some villagers suspect it is the handiwork of people eyeing the remaining lands in the village for construction purposes.
“We do not know how the fire occurred, but possibly some visitors to the wooded area could be behind it. There was a well-used track in the hilly area, with arrows painted for directions,” said Shetgaonkar.
A villager said that with land in the village being in high demand, builders want to claim the rema-ining land, and fire is their best weapon.
“We suspect the fire started from Sakla waddo and that the flames spread to the adjoining waddo,” said sarpanch Hanumant Naik.
A stretch of over a kilometer across the two waddos was gutted in the fire, but there was no loss of property as there were no houses in the area. “The whole property belongs to the comunidade. On the Regional Plan most of it is shown as no development zone,” said the sarpanch.
Web Source: The Times of India