VALPOI
It was a collaboration between locals of Morlem, police, forest and fire personnel, as they joined hands to control the forest fire at Morlem hill on Wednesday.
Responding to Chief Minister Pramod Sawant’s appeal for assistance from locals on Tuesday night, a large number of youngsters joined the various teams from the police, fire services, forest department, and panchas at the panchayat at 6 am, before they proceeded to the affected area to extinguish the fire.
The joint firefighting operations managed to extinguish much of the fire by Wednesday evening and the operations will resume on Thursday.
Forest officials have stated that forest staff will be deployed in the fire-affected areas to continuously monitor the situation.
When contacted, Morlem sarpanch Amit Shirodkar said over 100 youth from the village had participated in the firefighting operations.
“Following an appeal from the government, and to protect the environment, there was a spontaneous participation of the youth in the firefighting operation. I thank all those who took part in this exercise,” said Shirodkar.
Meanwhile, noted environmentalist Rajendra Kerkar expressed concern over the extensive destruction to the forest on account of the fires and estimated there had been a huge loss of natural resources in an area of about 300 hectares in Sattari taluka.
“The forest department is currently trying to extinguish the fire through helicopters, but if this process was undertaken four days earlier, a vast amount of forest cover could have been saved,” said Kerkar.
“It is vital to preserving natural resources or else, we will all face its adverse consequences in the future.”
