Forest fires are not a new phenomenon anywhere across the world, but to cope with them and brining fire under control is increasingly appearing as a big challenge in Bangladesh.
However, now it is our lone mangrove forest the Sundarbans that is bearing the brunt of forest fire since late Saturday noon. The fire erupted in Amurbunia region within the Chandpai range of the Sundarbans East Zone. Upon receiving information, two units of fire-fighters rushed to the Amurbunia area, but they could not reach the fire spot with fire fighting machinery and equipment as the sun had set by the time they arrived.
Expectantly, the fire will be doused by today but the damage has already been inflicted. According to forest guards and eyewitnesses, fire had erupted in multiple locations. Flames had engulfed piles of dry leaves from various trees in the forest, with fires spreading across approximately 50 locations.
The extent of the fire is anticipated to cover a distance of nearly two kilometres.
The point, however, this is not the first time that the Sundarbans has come under flames. At least 25 such forest fires had hit the Sundarbans in the past two decades, but responses to those fire incidents had been inefficient, inadequate while origins of those fire incidents are shrouded in obscurity.
As to formal procedure, with every fire incident, an inquiry committee was formed with officials of the Forest Department for investigation but due to mysterious reasons investigation reports were never made public. Moreover, financial damages caused by fires over the past two decades were never mentioned in any of the reports.
Relating to the latest fire incident we come to learn from reliable sources that abundance of dry leaves in the forest practically increased the possibility of catching fire triggered by extreme heat spreading with the wind.
In that case, questions automatically arise - given the prevalence of extreme heat waves sweeping across the country, why weren preventive measures taken beforehand? Why hadn the forest department install a round the clock tech-savvy monitoring system despite being allocated with a yearly handsome budget? Whom should we hold accountable for failing in risk assessment in the latest incident?
To cut a long story short, Saturdays forest inferno directly points finger at the Forest Conservation Management system in Bangladesh.
Whether it is manmade or natural, fire is breaking out in the Sundarbans almost regularly every year that are both avoidable and unavoidable. And local inhabitants of the forest have often blamed lack of proper investigation coupled with zero punishment meted out to culprits responsible.
We urge the forest conservation authority to look into the allegations before another fire breaks out, and promptly take action.
Another inferno at the Sundarbans will be far too many.
