The failure to clear roadside inflammable biomass, the absence of firebreaks, and a lack of coordinated preventive action have turned the plateau into a tinderbox waiting for a spark
The first day of March has always been unsettling for me. Even now, years after leaving the windswept lateritic plateau of Goa University, I wake up with the same old anxiety. I imagine the landward breeze rising before noon and intensifying toward sunset. I hear that unmistakable crackling in memory. I smell the dry, acrid smoke drifting from the Bambolim–Taleigao plateau above the Dona Paula Bay and the Arabian Sea.
From 2001 to 2022, that sound and smell defined my summers. For twenty-one years, I lived on a campus in a grassland zone that looked serene for most of the year. During the monsoon, it becomes a living carpet of wildflowers and ephemeral flush vegetation. However, from November to February, the palette changes. The inflammable grasses become bone dry, the soil moisture decreases, and the afternoon breeze sharpens. And somewhere — from a careless spark or a deliberate match — fire would begin at one end of the plateau and march relentlessly forward.
I learned to recognise a wildfire, not by sight, but by sound. The crackling sound reached my balcony before the flames did. Sometimes, the smoke arrived first, blackening the walls, stinging the eyes, and filling our home with the smell of charred earth. On the worst days, the advancing front came close enough that I could feel the heat on my face. At first, I watched with fear and frustration. Then I trained myself.
Immediately after the Diwali festival, I began by repeatedly clearing patches of maturing grass around my residence, leaving fire-resistant vegetation intact, and preserving biological crusts wherever possible. Over the years, without any formal firefighting gear, I became a small-scale wild-grassfire fighter. When I heard the crackle approaching our wooden fence, I soaked my feet and trousers to guard against burns and rushed out with buckets of water and wet rugs. I adopted a traditional technique used by Goa’s Fire Services for small blazes: cutting long green branches of Australian acacia and beating the flames to starve them of oxygen.
The combination of water, a wet cloth, and green branches was effective for restricted fires. To my knowledge, I was the only resident faculty member who did this year after year. Others saw the smoke; I stepped into it. I repeatedly alerted the Fire and Emergency Services, guided tenders to burning spots along unclear access routes, made calls and sent petitions to ministers and revenue officials, and invoked the provisions of the Goa Fire Force Act, the Disaster Management Act, and the Land Revenue Code in my public writings. I warned of unprecedented fires.
After the widespread fire, the campus resembled a carpet-bombed landscape. Blackened expanses stretched across the plateau. Biological soil crusts were also destroyed. The seed banks were scorched. Bird eggs, reptile habitats, earthworm tunnels, and ant nests — many silent lives perished. In the process of fighting fires, I deepened my practical understanding of ecopyrology — the ecology of fire — a subject I had taught at Goa University. What I observed and experienced outside my door as a resident was the same living laboratory I had drawn upon in the lecture hall.
On a small scale, I observed how fire could rejuvenate certain fire-resistant species. I watched how the majestic silk cotton tree stood unscathed, bursting into heavy flowering even as the blackened ground surrounded it. Passerine birds feasted on the nectar against a backdrop of ash. Fire-resistant shrubs also resprouted. Nature displays both its fragility and tenacity. However, the increasing frequency and ferocity of fires over the past two decades are not due solely to natural cycles. These challenges are amplified by human neglect, administrative indifference, and climate variability. The failure to clear roadside inflammable biomass, the absence of firebreaks, and a lack of coordinated preventive action have turned the plateau into a tinderbox waiting for a spark. Since October 2006, I have petitioned successive governments to adopt preventive strategies. I urged the use of satellite monitoring systems, such as NASA’s FIRMS, for real-time surveillance. I called for defensible zones around campuses, pre-positioned firefighting resources, community preparedness, and strict enforcement of existing laws.
The dread of March has not left me yet. Today, memories return with sharp clarity: smoke filling our house, flames advancing with the wind, the quiet envy I felt watching the silk-cotton tree and its birds thrive amid destruction, the helplessness when a large fire outpaced my buckets and branches. What I did for 20 years was not heroism in any cinematic sense. It was a citizen’s response to an avoidable disaster. It was a scientist applying knowledge with bare hands. It was a resident who refused to be a passive witness.
Many were unaware of this quiet mission because they were not present when it began. They did not see me run out with wet rugs or stand on the balcony breathing smoke and calculating the wind speed. However, I know what those two decades demanded: physical risk, emotional strain, and relentless advocacy. March unsettled me. However, it also reminds me that one determined individual can stand between a spark and a conflagration. We expect many wildfires this month, so people should be on alert.
(Dr Nandkumar M Kamat, who has a doctorate in microbiology, is a scientist and science writer)
