More than 5,000 Army jawans battled to douse the Bellandur lake fire which created problems for the residents of IT city Bengaluru. The fire engulfed the polluted lake on Friday night.
“Even though the flames were doused on Friday it started burning again. The Army has brought heavy fire fighting machines to control the fire. One of our personnel was bitten by a snake while he was trying to douse off the fire as snakes and many reptiles came out due to heat.
The soldier is out of danger and being treated,” Major General Narpat Singh Rajpurohit, Commandant of the Army Service Corps Centre said.
The fire, which is suspected to have been started in the grasslands by accident or by purpose to clear out the weeds, had kept over 5,000 Army personnel from the Army Service Corps and Iblur Fire range camp on tenterhooks through Friday and Saturday morning.
Talking to reporters on Saturday, lt Gen Vipin Gupta, Commandant, ASC Centre and College said the magnitude of the fire could be gauged with the fact that over 5,000 Army jawans took part in the dousing operations. “A sentry had spotted the fire on Friday around noon.
The fire was so big that all in the camp had to be alerted. Around 800 people were working on the spot, while the rest were kept on standby,” he said.
Visuals of the fire were aired on national television channels on Friday night but in spite of that, no Minister is yet to publicly respond to the questions raised surrounding the incident.
Union Minister of Human Resources Development, Prakash Javadekar, said, “What we are seeing in Bellandur lake now is a man-made disaster, caused due to total inaction for 50 years. The Bengaluru city once known as the City of lakes has become City of lakes on Fire. lakes actually douse the fire, but here, lakes are on fire because sewage is being dumped into the lakes. Earlier, when the lake caught fire, I visited as then Environment Minister. We prepared a draft plan to tackle it. But things haven’t improved … It is apathy that has converted this beautiful city to this.”
BJP leader Malavika Avinash also demanded the resignation of KJ George by questioning what the Government had done to fix the issue. “It would be graceful if he (George) steps down. He has to take responsibility since the Congress has been in power for five years and has done nothing to fix this issue. Untreated sewage continues to enter the lake,” she said. Other BJP leaders took to Twitter to criticise the Congress Government for failing to address the issue.
According to Army officials, over 15 fire tenders from the Army camp as well as two from the Karnataka Fire and Emergency services, struggled to douse the fire. “Even now there is slight simmering in the grasslands. We will be on a lookout today and through the night,” said lt Gen Gupta.
Gen Gupta said he would write to the Government about this incident and said the cause of the fire was not known. He said that this kind of incident has been happening on an annual basis, including a major fire in February 2017. “We will definitely write (to the State Government and Chief Minister) and take up the case. We are told they are taking precautions to ensure this does not happen again,” he said. The fire in the lake shows the apathy of the civil administration even though there was a strict orders to cleanse the lake by the National Green Tribunal.
Bellandur lake made big news last year when in August it spewed out so much toxic foam that residents living nearby complained they had to stay indoors. The lake had also caught fire last year.
The National Green Tribunal had directed the Karnataka Government to fix the lakes last year, but there has been no solution yet. The Bangalore Development Authority (BDA), which is the custodian of the lakes, has been working to remove weeds and is using high-power pumps and coir foam mattresses and other filtering techniques to stop the frothing, but to little impact.
Experts from Britain and Israel have visited to study the problem and they say that the solution is simple - stop pouring pollutants into the lakes.
Bellandur lake, the largest of the 262 lakes and tanks in Bengaluru, receives about 40 per cent of the city’s sewage.
The Environment Ministry had said in 2016 that everyday about 1,280 million litres of sewage is generated in Bengaluru, while the city’s infrastructure has the capacity to handle only 721 million litres of sewage.
Since 137 out of 500 sewage treatment plants are defunct, only 600 million litres sewage is treated and the rest goes to the lakes.