Uttarakhand forest fires: Social media terms it ‘National Emergency’, around 3000 hectares of forest area destroyed

Delhi/Dehradun: As the raging forest fires in Uttarakhand have destroyed around 3000 hectares of forest area across five districts in the state and claimed at least seven lives, the social media has erupted with comments and tweets debating the cause of the blaze on Sunday.

While taking up the issue, much like during any other disaster, the netizens are taking about the cause and how ‘human being’, to a certain extent, are responsible of such a kind of disaster.

As per a Facebook page, 'Uttarakhand Burning Silently' has garnered thousands of likes, especially, a post by the page admin, Ela Smetacek who is of Indo-Czech origin citing, "This is a National Emergency. The forests of Uttarakhand have been burning for over a week now" has been shared over 55,000 times and still counting. This has been garnering more and more supporters to bring this grave situation to light.

Here's the link of the FB page:

https://www.facebook.com/uttarakhandfire/?fref=ts

Even globally, the Uttarakhand lovers are uniting and raising this issue on the virtual platform. "I have stayed in the hill state during my growing up years and I cannot imagine a situation like this could have arisen in Uttarakhand state, this needs to stop immediately. People must unite and raise voices to save the hills and these trees" said Priyata Kalra from Heidelberg, Germany while sharing the "Uttarakhand Burning Silently" FB post on her wall.

Meanwhile, the micro-blogging website Twitter is also abuzz with comments against the Uttarakhand forest fire.

"Greed,corruption,politics can't douse these fires. These forests feed us, give us water, give us rain!#Uttarakhand," Bollywood actress, Dia Mirza tweeted.

Taking note of the situation, the Home Ministry has already sent several teams of National Disaster Response Force to help the state government to douse the fire.

A Mi-17 chopper of the IAF today began water sprinkling operations in Nainital to control the forest fires.

WATCH: IAF team spraying water over forest area in Srinagar & Koteshwar as #UttarakhandForestFire continues to ragehttps://t.co/Bz0n0FvPpX — ANI (@ANI_news) May 1, 2016

Seven persons have been killed due to the forest fires, which have spread to sparsely populated remote hill areas. Pauri, Nainital, Rudraprayag and Tehri are among the worst-hit districts.

Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar has said that the Centre was taking the forest fires very seriously and making all efforts to control it.

He also said that the government will study the reasons behind such major fires and prepare an action plan accordingly.

WATCH: Operation underway to douse #UttarakhandForestFire which has now spread across 2270 hectares of forest areahttps://t.co/CHO3FPjmj7 — ANI (@ANI_news) May 1, 2016