Koshi Province has recorded a total of 266 incidents of fires in the past two weeks, according to the Biratnagar-based provincial police office. Three people are reported killed in those incidents and more than 160 houses have been destroyed.

A total of 870 incidents of fires occurred in the province in the current fiscal year 2023-24, according to Deputy Superintendent of Police Sunil Dahal, who is also the information officer at Koshi Province Police Office.

As many as 21 people have died and 97 others have sustained injuries in fire incidents in Koshi Province since July 17, Dahal said, adding that properties worth approximately Rs150 million have been destroyed in the incidents.

Police say the majority of fire incidents result from human causes—poachers set fire to forests to disorient wild animals and farmers start fires to clear land for farming. Discarded cigarette butts are also among the biggest causes of fires.

“Police investigation shows that most of the fire incidents in the current fiscal year were caused by human carelessness and electric short-circuits,” Dahal said. “People in hilly areas were fond of causing forest fires in hope of better growth of grasses and Niguro (fiddlehead fern).”

According to the Koshi Province Police Office, eight people died in fire incidents in Morang alone in the current fiscal year while four died in Bhojpur. Three people died in Jhapa, two each in Panchthar and Solukhumbu and one each in Okhaldhunga and Taplejung this year.

On Saturday, three children— aged three, five and seven—were killed in a fire in Hatuwagadhi Rural Municipality-7 of Bhojpur district. The children died after the inferno engulfed local Kedar Karki’s cattle shed, where the children were playing. The victims are the children of Kedar and his brother. There were fire incidents in 34 different places in Solukhumbu, Tehrathum, Okhaldhunga, Panchthar, Ilam, Khotang, Bhojpur, Udayapur and Morang districts on Saturday alone.

On the same day, a massive fire destroyed as many as 22 houses in Rangali Municipality-3 of Morang district. The houses of the Santhal settlement were burned to the ground after an inferno raged through the colony at noon. According to eyewitnesses, the fire started after sparks from electrical wires, which ran over the settlement, fell on the straw-thatched roofs of the houses following a short circuit.

Meanwhile, Chief Minister of Koshi Province Kedar Karki and other high level officials visited the fire incident site of Bhojpur where three children were killed. The provincial government provided Rs100,000 each to the bereaved families.