Hot Spots Decrease, President Appreciates Gov’t Personnel, Volunteers

President Jokowi inspects the location of forest and land fires in Pelalawan Regency, Riau Province, last month. (Photo by: OJI/PR)

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo highly appreciated personnel from Manggala Agni (the forest fire control brigade), the Indonesian National Defense Forces (TNI), the Indonesian National Police (Polri), the Assessment and Application of Technology Agency (BPPT), Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG), the National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB), and Regional Disaster Mitigation Agency (BPBD), and Masyarakat Peduli Api (Fire Awareness Community) in Sumatra and Kalimantan for their hard work to extinguish the ongoing forest and land fires which has made great progress.

“They have made several efforts to extinguish the fires, for example through deploying 45 helicopters to scatter more than 200,000 kilograms of salt for cloud seeding and conduct water-bombing operation to put out the forest fires,” President Jokowi said in his facebook fan page on Friday (4/10).

The personnel and volunteers, the President added, also strive to extinguish fires engulfing peatland. “Alhamdulillah, praise be to Allah, the fires have been significantly reduced in the past week, ” he said.

In the meantime, the National Institute of Aeronautics and Space (Lapan)’s Modis-catalog satellite images on Monday (30/9) at 6 p.m. Western Indonesian Time (WIB), showed that air quality has improved because there has been a decrease in hot spots in Sumatra and Kalimantan.

The numbers of hot spots are decreased, particularly in Riau, Jambi, South Sumatra, West Kalimantan, and Central Kalimantan. The images also detected many hot spots in South Kalimantan, hence the air quality is improved to ‘good’ category.

“Based on the latest data (30/9), there are 673 hot spots. South Kalimantan has the highest hot spots with 141 spots, followed by Central Kalimantan with 63 hot spots, South Sumatra with 63 hot spots, and Jambi with 15 hot spots. On the other hand, there is no hot spots detected in Riau and West Kalimantan,” BNPB’s Data, Information, and Public Relations Director Agus Wibowo said in a press release on Tuesday (1/10).

According to the Agency, Weather Modification Technology (TMC) operation continues to be carried out in Sumatra and Kalimantan. On Monday, two aircrafts were deployed in Sumatra, the other two were deployed in Kalimantan to scatter 9,600 kilograms of salt for cloud seeding.

“As the results, rain has fallen in most part of Riau Province (Indragiri Hulu, Dumai, Pelalawan, Kuansing, Indragiri Hilir, Siak, Rokan Hulu, and Rokan Hilir), Jambi (Merangin, Sarolangin), West Kalimantan (Pontianak, Singkawang, Sintang, Melawi), South Kalimantan (HST, HSS), and Central Kalimantan (Palangkaraya, Barito Selatan, and Lamandau),” Agus said.

According to him, the number of hot spots shows a decreasing trend which must be maintained so that the public is able to breathe clean air, and does activities outside their houses. The rainfall can be used to wet the peatland and be reserved on reservoir.

“Peatland must be restored to wet state so it is unable to burn easily,” he explained. (*/BNPB PR/ES)

Translated by : Rany Anjany Subachrum
Edited by : Yuyu Mulyani