Coimbatore: The Kerala state forest department brought a chopper belonging to the Indian Air Force (IAF) from the Sulur airbase in Coimbatore district to put out forest fire in the Parambikulam forest range in the Parambikulam Tiger Reserve (PTR) on Friday evening. The officials claimed that over 50 hectares of forests were destroyed in the fire and the blaze had spread to the Parambikulam range from the Kozhikamuthi area at Topslip in the Pollachi forest division.On Thursday night, a portion of the reserve forest area caught fire at Kozhikamuthi in the Topslip forest range coming under the Pollachi forest division. Immediately, forest ranger M Krishnasamy and a team rushed to the spot and attempted to put off the fire. However, the fire had spread to more than 100 hectares of forest land."We brought a fire tender and various water tankers to douse the fire. We deployed more than 200 people who worked round the clock. The fire was controlled on Friday evening and over 150 hectares of forests were destroyed in the fire," said V Subbaiah, district forest officer (DFO), Pollachi forest division.However, the forest department deployed the forest guards, watchers and rangers in the affected areas to monitor the situation. "The cause of the fire will be known after investigations. We started to make fire lines in other areas of the reserve forest at Topslip to stop the spread of the forest fire," said Krishnasamy, ranger from Topslip.According to sources, water tanks with a capacity of 20,000 litres were kept in the IAF chopper and water was taken from the Hoonakkadavu reservoir to fill the tanks. This water was poured from the chopper on the affected areas twice.

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