1. After fighting a huge blanket of smoke in the morning, an Air Force chopper managed to sprinkle water on the fires during several sorties.
  2. Two choppers have been deployed in the state. They are meant to carry water from the Bhimtal lake and help douse the fires. But low visibility prevented a second chopper from being deployed in Pauri district.
  3. The National Disaster Response Force has pressed 130 members into service, each team is handling an area of 8 to 10 km, beating down the fire with green bushes.
  4. Home Minister Rajnath Singh has held discussions with chief secretary and other officials of the Uttarakhand government. The Prime Minister's Office has also been briefed.
  5. "The government is taking the forest fires of Uttarakhand very seriously. We have granted Rs. 5 crore to the state yesterday," said Union minister Prakash Javadekar.
  6. The Congress has attacked the Centre over the forest fires, claiming over 5,500 hectares of valuable flora and fauna have been lost.
  7. "On one side Modi government is fuelling the fire of political defection and on the other, has miserably failed to tackle one of the biggest environmental tragedies of recent times," said Congress' leader Randeep Surjewala.
  8. 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, Mr Javadekar has said.
  9. In the neighbouring states of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, satellite pictures have captured images of nearly 1,000 active fires. Overall, around 1,300 fires are raging across the hilly regions of north India.
  10. The government is starting a satellite picture-based fire alarm system that will send out text messages to the authorities every time a fresh fire is detected.
VIDEO: 6, 000 personnel fighting blaze, 53 active fires across state
 
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VIDEO: Aerial view of raging fires
Video player from: NDTV (Privacy Policy)