Three days later, Ground Zero Navapur finally quarantined

‘‘Alternative routes have been charted out for them and since they have to be checked at the RTO, the post has been moved out. It is not practically possible to stop complete movement, but we are trying to reduce the number of people at risk.’’

Senior RTO officials from district headquarters—Nandurbar and Dhulia—were on ground, ensuring that their staff made it out of the bird flu area quickly. Never mind the fact that these officials have been located barely one km away from the Diamond Poultry farm, where the bird flu is said to have landed first.

Navapur’s bus stand is also going to hit the roads and move to a new location, ‘‘in someone’s farm’’. The move is scheduled for tomorrow and comes after more than 1,000 buses and over 30,000 passengers have been passed through the town in the last two days. On an average, this small town bus depot sees 289 inter-state arrivals and departures every day. Between 12 pm on February 19 and 5 pm on February 20, an additional 333 inter-state buses drove through Navapur. At the end of the day, up to 30,000 passengers had glimpsed through the bus windows to see what bird flu was all about.

‘‘Tomorrow we will finalise the list of buses that will be asked to bypass Navapur town and head out straight to the new bus stand,’’ says M Kuwar. ‘‘This arrangement will continue till the town is not declared safe.’’

Passengers travelling in and out of Navapur will have to go through a medical check-up at one of the two camps set up by the administration before they enter.

Firmly chanting ‘‘better late than never’’, the officials are now trying to seal a town that has been besieged by outsiders for the last three days. Besides government officials, journalists and politicians (except the CM, who chose the safer aerial survey option) have been zooming in and out of the city. And while Navapur plays host to outsiders, many of its residents have packed their bags and moved out. Many poultry farm owners have chosen this time to ‘‘visit relatives’’ and hundreds of farm hands have also been sent home. Off the many approaches to the town, none has been sealed. The 10-km safety net that Deshmukh confidentially talked about is yet to be thrown in place.

Meanwhile, poultry owners in town have been asked to gear up for phase two of the bird flu clean-up. ‘‘The process to get rid of the birds in the 3-km radius is nearly over with around 1.5 lakh chicken being culled today,’’ says Zilla Parishad CEO Dr P Anbalagan, also a vet and expert on ground.

‘‘Next a fumigation process will be started to get rid of all the bird droppings and also ensure that the virus in the buried birds is exterminated.’’