Uttarakhand forest fire: Four arrested, says Prakash Javadekar

Dehradun: Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar on Monday said that four people have been arrested in connection with the Uttarkahnd forest fire case.

A squad of over 135 personnel of the special force of NDRF are deployed in Uttarakhand as part of multiple firefighting teams to combat the raging fire in the jungles of Uttarakhand that have destroyed about 3,000 hectares of jungles in several districts and claimed at least seven lives till now.

The teams have spread out in 13 affected areas of three districts of Pauri Garhwal, Almora and Chamoli with fire fighting equipment to tackle the massive blaze.

The fires in Uttarakhand have been burning for nearly 3 months, destroying close to 3,000 acres of forest cover so far. In the last one month alone, around 1,200 fires have broken out in the state.

In the neighbouring states of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, satellite pictures had captured images of active fires. Till Saturday, over 1,300 fires were raging across the hilly regions of north India.

The government is soon going to start a satellite picture-based fire alarm system that will send out text messages to the authorities every time a fresh fire is detected.