Rajbiraj, March 17 Dearth of fire engines and lack of roads to reach incident sites have posed difficulty in containing fire mishaps in Saptari. As dry season begins, incidents of fire are reported almost on a daily basis. Fire mishaps cause hundreds of families to lose their homes and property worth millions is destroyed every year in the district. A single fire engine in Rajbiraj Municipality is having a tough time battling multiple incidents of mishaps in the district. There are two other fire brigades in the municipality, but they have been gathering dust for the past five years for want of repair. “Only one fire brigade is functional,” said Umesh Yadav, fire station in-charge in the municipality. He added that fire engine could not reach incident sites due to sorry state of roads and sometimes multiple incidents are reported from different places. The sorry state of roads in rural areas has made fire control a very arduous job. Bharat Pokhrel, a staffer at the fire station, said fire engine could not reach the incident sites as houses and cowsheds were built by encroaching on the roads. Fire engines bought by other municipalities, namely Shambunath and HanumannagarKankalini, to some extent share the workload that was earlier shouldered by the fire station in Rajbiraj Municipality. According to District Disaster Management Committee, as many as 62 houses were gutted in fire this fiscal in Saptari.