Indonesia’s National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) has sent seven water bombing helicopters to areas detected to have increasing number of forest fire hotspots, as its haze has already affected neighboring countries of Singapore and Malaysia, a senior BNPB official said on Monday.
“Efforts to extinguish fires in the forest and plantations have been intensified by the BNPB by sending 7 water bombing helicopters,” BNPB Spokesperson Sutopo Purwo Nugroho told Xinhua by phone.
“In Riau, we besieged one Bolkow and one Sikorsky helicopters. We also dispatched 300 troops and police to extinguish the fires. In South Sumatra, we sent 3 helicopters, while the remaining two ones are serving in Central and West Kalimantan provinces,” he said.
He said that as on Monday, Kalimantan has been detected by MODIS satellite to have the largest number of hotspots. In Central Kalimantan, some 630 hotspots were detected. Meanwhile, in West and South Kalimantan the hotspots were detected at 268 and 74 respectively.
In other provinces, 281 hotspots were detected in South Sumatra, 94 in Riau, 53 in Bangka Belitung, 48 in Jambi and 8 in Lampung.
According to Sutopo, haze from Kalimantan blew to northeast direction towards areas whelmed by the Kalmaegi cyclone. Meanwhile, haze from South Sumatra has already affected Riau and neighboring countries of Singapore and part of Malaysia, making the standard air pollution index in the affected areas raised to moderate level.
Sutopo said that most of the fire in plantations and forest in those provinces were incited by efforts to expand plantation areas by torching with peat lands becomes most areas affected in the forest fire.
Sutopo estimated that areas affected by fires in those provinces may expand as the peak of the dry season in the country was estimated to occur in mid October this year.
