Bellandur lake on fire

​Bengaluru: Bengaluru's Bellandur lake is in news again. A fire broke out at this lake, considered to be one of the biggest in the city, on Thursday sending out huge cloud of toxic smoke causing panic among locals.

The flames raged for a while, and the area was enveloped in smoke. Fires are often sparked by deadly effluents in the lake, but this time, it was a pile of burning garbage that caused the scare.

On Thursday, a part of the lake caught fire, with fumes spreading across the nearby Sun City Apartments and Iblur flyover.

"Usually, a pile of garbage strewn around the lake is set on fire, but yesterday it caused a scare among residents and motorists as the smoke started billowing and surrounding the lake in the evening," KU Ramesh, deputy director at Karnataka Fire Department, said.

Toxic chemicals, garbage from small factories are dumped regularly in Bellandur and Varthur lakes in the city rendering these water bodies useless.

The Bengaluru Development Authority has been under pressure to restore the lakes but no action has been taken so far.

Hopefully the attention and outrage over the huge fire there will help wake up the authorities and media to save a crying lake. Once a beautiful lake hosting fish and many varieties of birds, is now a haven only for different kinds of pollution.

The Environment ministry has ordered an enquiry into the incident of fire that had broken out in the garbage strewn around Bellandur lake.

"We are enquiring into it. We will have to see what were the reasons behind the fire," Environment Minister Anil Madhav Dave said.