Forests, fields are all vulnerable THE summer months of April, May and June are terrible for forests because of the dreaded fires that visit them year after year. This year, the situation has been worse than usual, what with thousands of acres of agricultural land catching fire in Bathinda and Muktsar districts of Punjab, along with Sirsa district of Haryana. Four persons have been killed, many injured and crop and property worth lakhs destroyed. All this because some farmers carelessly set fire to wheat stubs to clear the fields. The fire spread and the strong winds turned them into a conflagration. It is providential that many of the residential areas were not engulfed otherwise the toll would have been much higher. What the horrifying incident has brought out loud and clear is that the rural areas are just not equipped to handle such emergencies. Firefighting equipment is virtually non-existent at most places. Government machinery is too haphazard to take coordinated action. It is mostly the common citizens who have to fend for themselves. One weakness that is noticed is the lack of traditional water bodies which could have been used to douse the flames. There is need to sensitise every section to the grave threat that stares them in the eye. Whether it is the fires in the fields or the forests, the root cause is always negligence. One spark can play havoc during these days when there is heavy accumulation of dry materials due to the hot weather. Last few days have seen the outbreak of major fires in the forest areas of Kasauli, Morni and Hoshiarpur. A scientific plan has to be evolved to at least contain, if not totally extinguish, such fires in the shortest possible time. The loss they cause to the bio-diversity, flora and fauna is too widespread to be quantified in financial terms. A little rain on Sunday and Monday helped check the fires but one cannot expect Nature to intervene time and again.