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Fire still raging at Tangerang landfill
Fire continues to rage at Tangerang's Rawa Kucing landfill, burning through 80 percent of the area in what is suspected to be a self-sustaining combustion involving methane from decomposing waste.
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Firefighters battle a blaze on Oct. 20, 2023 at the Rawa Kucing landfill in Tangerang, Banten. (Antara/Sulthony Hasanuddin)
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irefighters are still trying to put out a blaze that has been raging since last week through the Rawa Kucing landfill in Tangerang, Banten, which has caused temporary disruptions to flights at nearby Soekarno-Hatta International Airport.
Fire broke out on Friday afternoon at the 34.8-hectare Rawa Kucing landfill, which began its operations in 1992.
While its cause remains unknown, authorities suspect that heaps of plastic waste caught fire amid the prolonged dry spell triggered by the El Niño climate pattern currently affecting many parts of the country.
As of Friday, the Tangerang municipal and Banten provincial disaster mitigation agencies (BPBDs) have sent 40 fire trucks and 530 firefighters to quench the fire, which was still burning on Sunday.
The fire had burned around 80 percent of the landfill as of Sunday morning, said Tangerang city spokesperson Mualim.
According to Mualim, firefighters had made little progress in extinguishing the landfill blaze due to the presence of methane gas, a colorless, odorless and highly flammable gas produced during the decomposition of organic waste.
“The fire is [burning] inside the trash mounds, where methane gas is also trapped. [This causes] the fire to grow whenever there are strong winds,” Mualim said on Sunday, as quoted by Tempo.co.
