COIMBATORE: After six hours of struggle, Coimbatore forest officials doused the fire that occurred at the Tamil Nadu-Kerala border near Anaikkadu tribal settlement in Narasipuram reserve forest in the wee hours of Saturday.
Despite Boluvampatti forest range staff had created a forest fire prevention line (that is, clearing of vegetation and dried grasses) much earlier as precautionary measures to prevent the spreading of forest fire at over six km on the Tamil Nadu-Kerala border, the fire started from the Kerala forest side and soon spread into Anaikadu tribal settlement in Boluvampatti forest range at 6.30 pm.
Forest officials said, “We suspect that the spark spread near the Anaikkadu tribal settlement which is over 1,200 metres (from sea level) at Boluvampatti forest range, from Kerala side, and our six staff who have been camping as part of preventing the forest fire, started dousing off the fire. Since there was no water available for a three-km range, our staff who were involved in controlling the fire, beat it with the help of green branches, which is an older method to prevent fire from spreading, and we managed to control the fire after three hours at 10 pm only as the wind speed was high. Later, after two hours, we managed to douse the fire completely at 1 am on Saturday.”
A senior forest department official said that no precious trees or wild animals were affected due to the fire though there were movements of wild elephants, leopards, etc.
The official added, “We lost half a hectare of lemon grass in the fire. ”