Wildlife incidents put Meghalaya Fire and Emergency Department on toes

Shillong, May 2: The Fire and Emergency Service (F&ES) department is facing a tough time as they have to attend around 20 to 25 cases of jungle or wildfire across the State.
While speaking to a section of the reporter, F&ES, DM Sangma said that they were going through a tough time to control the situation since they are required to attend to so many fire incidents every day.
“This is the situation right now we are going through. It is really a difficult situation,” he said.
According to him, most of the fire cases which are being reported are jungle or wildfire which is due to carelessness of the people as they would throw cigarettes or “beedi” after smoking.
Mentioning about the fire at the PHE go-down recently, he said that the plastic pipes stored at the godown was burned due to jungle fire.
He, however, said that prevention and precaution would have to come from the people only.
“The only thing we can do is that we can send our men whenever fire incidents cases are reported. Our men make efforts to douse the fire,” F&ES SP said.
Sangma also impressed that the people should immediately inform the F&ES if there any fire incident.
“Now it is very easy as people will just need to dial 112 emergency numbers. We will be alerted within two three minutes and our men will start within two minutes from the fire station,” F&ES SP said.
Informing that the F&ES is having acute shortage of manpower, he said that they are providing short term training to around 120 Home Guard volunteers.
“We are employing the Home Guard volunteers to help the firemen,” Sangma added.
It may be mentioned that several fire incidents reported in and around Shillong have kept the Meghalaya Fire and Emergency Services Department busy.
The department’s personnel on Monday battled 13 jungle fires, two transformer fires, a sawmill fire, a vehicle fire, and a case of short circuit on an electric pole.
They attended 10 forest fires and a drowning case on April 26. A jungle fire on April 27 and 15 such cases on April 28 followed.