Nepal battles worst forest fire in years

Nepal has been battling its worst forest fires in years, with smoke wafting across its mountains and souring the air as it settles into the bowl that holds the capital city of Kathmandu.

Five people have died so far trying to put out the fires that have been raging since January, said Sundar Sharma, a senior official of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority, on Friday.

Wildfires were burning in at least 60 places across 22 of Nepal’s 77 administrative districts, he said, adding to the growing levels of pollution across the country that lies nestled between India and the Tibet region of China.

Details on losses from the fires are still being collected, Sharma said. This has been the worst fire season by number since 2012, when the government started keeping records.

Nepal ordered schools to close for four days at the end of March after air pollution climbed to hazardous levels, forcing millions of students to stay home.

Forest fires often erupt in Nepal during the January-May dry season, when villagers burn dry leaves in the woodlands to prompt fresh grass growth for their cattle.

Sharma said the number of fires this year was 15 times the number of fires in 2020. He did not immediately have a reason for the increase.

The air quality index (AQI) in Kathmandu was at an unhealthy level of 174 on Friday, according to data published on iqair.com, a site that monitors air quality. An AQI level below 50 is considered good.

“The pollution levels have come down in many places but this is not adequate enough for healthy breathing,” said Indu Bikram Joshi, a spokesman for the Department of Environment.

Across the border, in India’s Uttarakhand state, forest fires have been burning since October, killing four people, according to the state government.

In April alone, there have been 657 incidents of forest fires in Uttarakhand, a bulk of them in the state’s Garhwal region near Nepal.

Aljazeera