Daily fire bulletin to be issued in Uttarakhand to keep fake news on forest fires under check

The bulletin will give updates on active forest fire, area affected, work done to control wildfire, among other details.

After the rampant spread of fake news last week about raging forest fires in Uttarakhand on social media, the state forest department has decided to release daily fire bulletins starting Tuesday.

The state forest department is using innovative pine needle check-dam technology in a bid to reduce the forest fire incidents.(HT Photo)

The bulletin will give updates on active forest fire, area affected, work done to control wildfire, among other details.

Parag Madhukar Dhakate, social media co-ordinator for Uttarakhand forest department, said that the initiative of issuing daily fire bulletins by the department was started after fake news about forests fire raging in Uttarakhand went viral over social media last week.

“The fire bulletin will give day-to-day information of active wildfire, details of the fire crew, fire lines, watchtowers, information about control room, how to report on forest fire and other such details. We will also be adding weather forecast for the next two days in the bulletin which will also help people understand the chances of forests catching fire in the state,” said Dhakate.

The fire bulletin which will be released in the evening will be accessible to public on the forest department’s website and its social media handles.

This year forest fire incidents have witnessed a dip compared to last year due to the nationwide Covid-19 lockdown and frequent rainfall received in the hilly regions of the state.

Last month, data released by the Uttarakhand forest department on the area affected by forest fires showed an almost 98% dip this year from April 5 till May 10 compared to the same time last year.

Last year, during the same time period, 675.84 hectares of forest area had been gutted whereas this year only 12.03 hectares of the forest area had been affected till May 10. Till now, over 134.93 hectares of the total forest area has been affected.

In Uttarakhand, 0.17% of total forest cover comes under the extremely fire-prone category, 1.60% under very highly fire-prone, 9.32% under highly fire-prone, 21.66% under moderately fire-prone and 67.25% under less fire-prone category.