Wednesday was a hectic day for the fire brigade personnel in Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad as the control room was inundated with calls regarding uprooting and falling of trees across the city. Traffic was also affected as fallen trees blocked roads at several places.

PMC chief fire officer P D Ranpise said they started getting calls informing tree fellings from 7.40 am. “We have received more than 150 calls today and have managed to attend to about 80 complaints till 7 pm. We had to face staff shortage also.

All vehicles of the fire brigade were on field since early morning. A team of about 80 firemen was put on the job to clear the fallen trees from the roads and other spots till late evening,” he said.

According to the information from the fire brigade control room, they recevied calls of tree felling from Kothrud, Prabhat Road, Bhandarkar Road, Hadapsar, Katraj, Bibvewadi, Sadashiv Peth, Narayan Peth, Rasta Peth, Nigdi, Pimpri, Chinchwad and other places. In Pimpri-Chinchwad, there were as many as 37 tree felling incidents.

Though no casualties were reported, some vehicles were damaged.

When contacted, Deputy Commissioner of Police Manoj Patil said, “Non-functioning signals and the incidents of tree felling led to traffic snarls at some points in the city. In order to help the fire brigade personnel, we also pitched in to remove the trees from roads.”

Meanwhile, the state transport buses were also hit due to tree felling. Vijay Divate, chief of the Swargate bus depot said, “Many of our buses witnessed trouble. Near Nasarapur a tree had completely blocked the way and took hours to remove it delaying our services.