Fire rages for 4 hrs in JNU jungles

Biswajit Choudhury was sitting at the dhaba on Sunday afternoon, when he saw smoke billowing from the jungles near the Brahmaputra Hostel at Jawaharlal Nehru University.

After five years in the campus, he had got used to such fires in summer, he said. But this one came perilously close to the residential area. It burnt the practice nets that encircled the ground.

Then began the dousing efforts. The Fire department was notified and the students, armed with hoses and water from hostel bathrooms, set to the task. It was around 2.30 pm.

Fanned by the wind, the fire spread rapidly, and engulfed as much as 50 acres, according to eyewitnesses.

At least five fire tenders were rushed to the campus, where several locations — including the famous Parthasarthy Rock area — were already ablaze.

After four hours of firefighting, the blaze was brought under control but not till it had charred a large chunk of the jungle. The trees looked stripped of green and a stench of burnt wood was all over.

The smoke was so dense the students said they could not see anything. “It was like the fog in the winter,” said Choudhury, a PhD student, who too helped douse the fire so it did not reach the hostels. Never did a jungle fire in JNU come so close, he said.

“From the windows now you can see up to the

... contd.