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| 24 houses gutted in Tun, 32 families rendered homeless | | Fire blasts disaster preparedness claims | | Asif Iqbal Naik
Kishtwar, Feb 12 : At least 24 houses were gutted in a devastating fire in Tun village of Kishtwar district during the preceding night. The fire rendered 32 families homeless and claimed around 100 livestock.
Reports said the fire was caused by a heater used by the locals to keep them warm during winter. The Tun village is about 140 Kms from Kishtwar and borders the neighbouring state Himachal Pradesh. It has no road connectivity and gets extremely cold in winter. The area is presently under 3-4 feet of snow cover.
The only communication network with the village is the BSNL satellite phone installed in a nearby village. The eyewitnesses said that barring a couple of houses, the whole village turned into rubble as flames consumed the structure one after the other.
Thirty-two families comprising 70 persons had to spend the night in open. And with no road connectivity, the hapless souls will have nobody to fall back upon. Reports said the flames were put out by neighboring villagers this afternoon. The villagers have questioned the role of state's disaster management cell.
The eyewitnesses said that even though the fire was brought under control, the smoke and foul smell due to perishing of livestock is still coming out of the burnt houses.
As soon as the news of the fire reached Tehsil HQ Gulabgard andKishtwar, a police party from nearby police post rushed to the effected village to access loss to the property. However, the police team is likely to reach the effected village by midnight.
A team of BJP led by senior party leader Sunil Sharma rush to the spot and distributed blankets, cloths and other relief material, beside cash assistance of Rs. 500 each to the effected families.
Meanwhile the concern MLA Sajjad Ahmed Kichloo, Minister of State for Home unsuccessfully attempted to land the effected village along with concerned Deputy Commission. Kichloo who arrived at Kishtwar in the afternoon in state chopper could not manage to land at effected village due to presence of heavy snow cover in the area and returnedback to Srinagar.
Early Times from time to time highlighted the lack of teeth in disaster management cell announced by the government few years back.
It is worth mentioning that this is the 6th major fire incident to hit Kishtwar District. In the year 2008, nearly 180 houses gutted in a fire incident in Margi village of Warwan followed by fire in Ongie village and Khadalu Hamlet of Padder. In Khadalu, four member of a family were perished alive in a similar fire incident on 14 January 2012. |
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