The number of vacationers, planning to head to the hills this summer, availing the forest fire SMS alert service by the government has doubled after the Kurangani hills fire that claimed 17 lives.

Prior to the March 11 fire in Theni, 236 people from Tamil Nadu - mostly forest officers - had registered for the SMS alerts sent by the Forest Survey of India, an organisation under the Ministry of Environment and Forests. In the past week, the number has gone up to 420, said FSI officials.

The SMS alerts were primarily intended for forest officials to reduce response time. "We should reach out to tour operators and trekkers too after the Theni fire," said Vikram E, deputy director of FSI, headquartered in Dehradun. "People are seriously considering safety while planning their vacation," said Vikram, who heads the forest fire division of FSI.

    The real-time alert was introduced in January last year to reduce the time taken for response to a disaster and also to equip the front-line forest managers with the latest available data.

Though forest officials have their own means of collecting data through locals, satellite assistance gives them an aerial view of the extent of the fire.

In 2017, across the country, there has been an increase in the number of forest fires compared to 2016 - it went up from 15,937 to 35,888.

Tamil Nadu, too, saw a rise from 95 to 301 during the same time period. The highest such incidents happen in March.