Bengaluru's Bellandur lake catches fire again

Bengaluru, March 6 (IANS) Bengaluru's polluted Bellandur Lake, infamous for its severe pollution levels, caught fire once again on Friday.The blaze broke out after some people burnt a heaps of garbage in the lake's buffer zone, officials said.Soon after noticing a huge cloud of smokes emitting from the Bellandur Lake, the residents living around the lake informed the authorities concerned, which took them almost 12 hours to douse the fire.According to the officials, some labourers and ragpickers living around the lake might have dumped waste, including plastic and insulated wires, on its bed."Ragpickers living nearby burn the wires to recover copper. That could have resulted in such massive flames, that later spread to the lake's bed," a senior the Bengaluru Development Authority (BDA) official added.One of the biggest city's water bodies, the Bellandur Lake had seen similar fire incidents since May 2015 on mumber of occasions but these fire incidents were attributed to the presence of pollutants in the water.
--IANS nbh/sdr/