Two smokes, one team: triage on a 41 °C April afternoon
On 6 April, at 13:40, you are the beat guard of Compartment 12 in a dry deciduous range in the Vindhyan foothills. The temperature is 41 °C, humidity 18 per cent, and a steady south-westerly wind of about 20 km/h is blowing. Two smokes are reported within minutes of each other. The first is in Compartment 12 itself: a 40-hectare, three-year-old teak plantation whose eastern edge is a six-metre-wide maintained fire line, where fire is creeping through leaf litter with flame height under 30 cm. The second is in Compartment 9, a grassland on a slope, where nine mahua-flower collectors, including two children, are working, and a hamlet of 14 houses sits 600 m downwind. A seasonal nullah runs along the east of Compartment 9. You have four daily-wage fire watchers, six blowers, four rakes, one jeep carrying 30 litres of water, and mobile phones that lose signal after 200 m. No extra labour is available, because the hamlet's temple festival is tomorrow.
1. Sequence your response over the next 60 minutes: which fire gets your team first, who goes where, and what do you personally do before moving?
Read the worked answer
Priority: lives first, then the hamlet, then the plantation.
- Before moving (about five minutes). Inform the Range Officer and the fire control room: compartment numbers, wind direction, presence of people inside the fire zone, resources at hand. A fire that threatens life is reported first even if the other fire looks more expensive.
- Compartment 9 gets the first response. A grass fire on a slope with a 20 km/h tail wind can outrun a walking person, and the nine collectors are in the path of the run, not behind it. Send two watchers by jeep to the nullah with clear instructions: move the group across the wind to the already-burnt or bare bank of the nullah, never downhill ahead of the flames, and count heads aloud before moving.
- One watcher at the hamlet to keep people and cattle out of the smoke and, if time permits, to clear a 3–4 m strip on the windward side of the huts.
- You and one watcher to Compartment 12. Litter fire with flames under 30 cm is a ground fire that beating can hold, and the six-metre fire line gives a safe anchor, so the remaining blowers and rakes can contain it. The plantation will survive a light ground fire; the people in Compartment 9 will not survive a running grass fire.
2. The wind pushes the Compartment 12 fire towards the fire line. State exactly where you anchor your small party, how you use the four untrained watchers, and what you must not do.
Read the worked answer
Anchor at the fire line and attack the flanks, never the head.
Where. Take the party to the fire line on the eastern edge and start from a corner already burnt or from the line itself, working along the flank that the wind is pushing the fire away from. The fire line stays between the flames and the plantation; if the fire crosses it, the anchor is lost and you fall back to the next break, such as a road or a ploughed strip.
How to use untrained watchers. Pair them, never send one alone, keep them within sight and whistle range, give each pair a single flank and a clear escape route into already-burnt ground, and rotate them every 20–30 minutes because 41 °C and radiant heat cause exhaustion fast. Beating is done from the black side, working the edge in short strokes.
What not to do. Do not post anyone at the head of a running fire. Do not counter-fire or backburn: that needs the Range Officer's sanction and is prohibited near a boundary or a young plantation. Do not work with fire below you on a slope. Do not let watchers carry water into smoke without a lookout. Watch the wind after 15:00, because valley winds often swing and can turn a flank attack into a head attack.
3. What must you report, in what order, and how do you maintain the record when the phone signal is unreliable?
Read the worked answer
Report in order of consequence, then build a written trail.
First message (by phone if possible, otherwise by runner to the nearest signal point): risk to human life and the location of the mahua collectors; then compartment numbers with a landmark or GPS reading; then fire type (ground or crown), estimated area in hectares, direction of spread, and the resources needed. Only after that, the estimated damage.
Second message after containment: area burnt, whether the fire line held, any injury, any suspected cause such as a beedi butt, a mahua-flower collection fire or a deliberately lit patch, and the manpower and equipment used.
Record. Enter in the fire register and daily diary: date and time of detection, time of arrival at each fire, personnel present, equipment issued and returned, area burnt estimated by pacing or GPS, species and age of crop affected, and the suspected cause. A fire report that does not mention that people were inside the fire zone will later look like an omission, and an unrecorded deployment of daily-wage watchers becomes a problem at wage-payment time. Do not give any statement to the press or to the temple committee without the Range Officer's permission.