Mount Abu "The Tinderbox ready to explode”

Forest fire behind the firing range

Forest fire Arna village smouldering fire chandmari

Human carelessness Beginning of forest fire firing range.

Last week while driving home I saw smoke bellowing around the army shooting range, for a second I lost all sense of reality and jammed on my brakes to get a better view and almost got my one way ticket to the Hades, a speeding car had to hit hard on his brakes and with screeching tyres only inches to spare manage to stop his car behind me. My folly had a devastating effect, the driver behind me was all shook up, in righteous anger he barged into me calling me you Bloody “Pagal Angrez”,(mad Englishman) you want to get killed. I was all shook up because had he not applied his power brakes, I would have probably ended up flying straight into the burning inferno that had got me into this situation.
Mount Abu’s forest now looks like a graveyard of dried and dying trees the drought conditions have taken their toll on this area gradually over the years. The summer this year is going to be terrible; the average day temperature last week hovered between 30 to 35 degrees and the humidity around 30% or slightly lower. These high atmospheric temperatures and low humidity offer ideal conditions for a fire to start. Last week spontaneous fires sprang up in different parts of Abu, causing the populace at large to look to the heavens for an answer to their prayer, as our forest department is under staffed and ill-equipped to fight any kind of forest fire.
I’m worried because this “Tinderbox” of ours is on the brink of exploding into a burning inferno that would be detrimental to our eco-sensitive environment, there would be a massive loss of rare flora only found in this part of the world. If only our forest department would employ the local illegal wood cutters in paying them a substantial amount to clear the dry under growth and dead leaves and twigs and burn it in isolation. This small measure could go a long way to control a forest fire from spreading, the department would be killing two birds with one stone, one, illegal sale of forest wood would be reduced and two, a small measure in ensuring fire spreading through a continuous supply of dry vegetation along its path. The pictures above are photographs taken last week of spontaneous fires around Abu.