TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Sumatra scrambles to control forest fires
Ablaze: Residents watch as a fire engulfs bushes on peat land in West Dumai district, Dumai city, Dumai, Riau, on Tuesday
Change Size
A
blaze: Residents watch as a fire engulfs bushes on peat land in West Dumai district, Dumai city, Dumai, Riau, on Tuesday. Fires have reportedly destroyed hundreds of hectares of protected forests and peat land in Dumai city. The Dumai Meteorology and Climatology Agency says 15 hotspots were recorded in the city. (Antara/Aswaddy Hamid)
With the dry season expected to peak during the Asian Games in August and September, local administrations on the island of Sumatra are scrambling to prevent forest fires from escalating into a conflagration that could disrupt the major sporting event.
The Games will be held in Jakarta and Palembang, the capital city of South Sumatra, a region that has recorded a number of forest-fire hot spots in recent days.
A major fire disaster could disrupt not only the events in Palembang but also those in Jakarta, with many athletes and visitors expected to fly to Indonesia via neighboring Singapore and Malaysia, which have in the past been affected by smoke from forest fires.
According to the Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency (BMKG), at least 111 hot spots in seven provinces in Sumatra — Bangka-Belitung, Bengkulu, Jambi, Lampung, North Sumatra, Riau and South Sumatra — have been detected since Tuesday.
Riau is the province with the most hot spots with 80 detected on Wednesday, or almost triple the 29 detected on Tuesday
“Of the 80 hot spots, 66 have a level of certainty above 70 percent meaning it’s likely they’re already fires,” said BMKG Palembang spokesperson Marzuki.
“However, there have yet to be reports of any haze as visibility is still 7 kilometers, which is good.”
Riau Governor Arsyadjuliandi Rachman said there would be no compromise in battling forest fires. Other than helping to ensure Palembang is haze-free, Riau will also be hosting the Indonesian Special Olympics (SOIna), he said.
“The heat wave that has hit Riau has been anticipated. All efforts have been made so that forest fires do not spread.”
Meanwhile, the BMKG also detected 10 hot spots on Wednesday in Jambi, the third-highest number, with levels of fire certainty from as low as 51 percent to 94 percent.
In South Sumatra, the local disaster mitigation agency (BPBD) said that forest fires had been expanding in the past week.
Ansori, the agency’s spokesman, said at least 610 hectares of forest had been burned in Pedamaran subdistrict over the previous four days.
The South Sumatra Forest Haze Task Force said it would raise the alert level from yellow to red on July 25 in anticipation of the peak of the dry season.
The task force has deployed personnel to monitor 55 high-risk areas and has warned villagers and private plantations to be on alert for fires and to avoid slash-and-burn forest clearing.
South Sumatra Governor Alex Noerdin was quoted as saying by mongabay.co.id in April that there were four high-risk regions in the province: Banyuasin, Musi Banyuasin, Ogan Ilir and Ogan Komering Ilir (OKI). OKI is the most environmentally threatening as it has the largest reserves of peatland which, if burned, releases four times more carbon dioxide than regular forests.
Leading paper firm Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) Sinar Mas has been involved in tackling the fires. “Today we sent a Super Puma helicopter with 4,000 liters of water to conduct water bombing in Pedamaran,” the company’s general manager for fire management, Mas Sujica Lusaka, said in a statement.
The National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) said it would support its provincial branches by deploying three water-bombing helicopters and two patrol helicopters in South Sumatra.
“We have also prepared artificial rain-making technology and mobilized BNPB personnel in South Sumatra,” agency spokesperson Sutopo Purwo Nugroho told The Jakarta Post.
Palembang will host 10 sporting events, including women’s soccer, men’s soccer, basketball, a triathlon, shooting and sepak takraw competitions in the Games.
President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has called on officials in the regions to ensure the Asian Games are fire and haze free, saying that he would not hesitate to fire provincial police chiefs and military commanders for a failure to tackle forest fires.
— Jon Afrizal, Rizal Harahap, Yulia Savitri contributed to this story from Jambi, Pekanbaru and Palembang
