ETURNAGARAM WILDLIFE SANCTUARY: Trees yanked from their roots and strewn all over the ground. Trunks ripped apart as far as the eye could see on either side of the Tadvai-Medaram road. Bent electric poles.
Just a few hundred metres away from this apocalyptic scene at the 80,600 hectare Eturnagaram Wildlife Sanctuary, other lucky trees stand tall, with no indication
of the large-scale devastation that lies yonder. Nature’s carpet bombing is confined to around a 500-metre stretch of the road and extends on both sides to a total of around 7–8 km.
The Telangana Forest Department is still trying to assess the extent of the destruction, which likely took place in a short span of time on August 31. Speaking to TNIE, Mulugu District Forest Officer Rahul Jadhav says the havoc, “one-of-its-kind in India”, took place between 5.30 pm and 7.30 pm on that day. However, to pinpoint the exact time and the reason behind it, the department would need the help of the National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC).
“We have asked the NRSC to do a drill-down” to get the time and also to find out what caused the formation of winds that carried so much energy,” the Mulugu DFO adds.
An 185-member team of the department is at work, walking all around the areas affected by the rare phenomenon, a highly localised convective activity according to IMD officials. Based on their work, the forest department has now increased the estimated area of devastation from 200 hectares to 300 hectares, the DFO reveals.
From the road, it looks like the trees have fallen in a linear pattern. But the affected area is not exactly a rectangle, the DFO clarifies.
While some estimates place the number of fallen trees at 1 lakh, the forest department is still counting them manually, with numbers clearly written on the trunks. The counting process is expected to be completed in the next three to four days.
“Electric poles were flattened [on August 31, electricity to Medaram village was cut off. We removed the debris on the road the next day,” the DFO says.
Using AI, drone tech to count fallen trees
Surendar, a priest at the Medaram Sammakka-Sarakka temple who uses the route often, says he has never seen such havoc in his lifetime with so many fallen trees. “There are two villages nearby on either side of the affected area. But the calamity did not affect them,” he adds.
The DFO notes, “Had it happened over a habitation, the devastation in the form of loss of lives would have been immense.”
Is such devastation possible in an urban area? It appears that one has to wait for more information from the NRSC on the natural phenomenon that led to this massive destruction before one can answer that question.
It is not just the Forest department that is gathering data on the number of fallen trees in the Eturnagaram sanctuary. The rare phenomenon has piqued the curiosity of environmental researchers too.
AI can predict calamities, minimise destruction: Expert
While we are standing on the Tadvai-Medaram road, a drone whizzes past us and soars above in an attempt to gather data on the devastation. D Narsinga Rao, who is operating the drone, tells TNIE, “We are capturing the images of the calamity and will be using AI and ML to derive insights from the data.” Rao — formerly with the Survey of India and now a guest faculty at the Centre for Environment, JNTU — is developing an AI model with the help of a Cyberabad-based startup. The model can deduce information such as how many trees have fallen.
Further, the drone footage will help them train their AI model. This model can give accurate insights when trained with the natural datasets taken from the drone footage, Rao notes.
Then it can even be used for inspections by forest authorities, to map out damages caused by similar natural calamities, and to predict such events and minimise the destruction, he adds.
The researcher informs us that he has done a topographical survey of Eturnagaram around 20 years ago and is familiar with the territory and says he hasn’t seen anything like this earlier. Losing largescale vegetation would cause environmental imbalances, starting with a sudden increase in temperature, Rao, who was involved in coastal topographical damage mapping after the 2004 tsunami for the Survey of India, notes. Green zones like this must be protected and as a next step, he suggests that the government can plan reforestation in the affected area with native trees.
(With inputs from Sri Loganathan Velmurugan)
