Jakarta (The Indonesian News) – The National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB) has reported that approximately 98 percent of peatland fires in six priority provinces in Sumatra and Kalimantan have been successfully extinguished.
In his presentation at the Limited Meeting on Natural Disaster Response Developments on Monday (September 7), Head of BNPB Suharyanto said that ground and air operations involving joint elements have successfully extinguished 71,069.65 hectares of burned peatland out of a total of 72,009.10 hectares in those six provinces.
“We have successfully extinguished 71,069.65 hectares in the six provinces as of today,” Suharyanto explained. “So we report the total burned area in the six provinces involving peatlands. These peatlands are difficult to extinguish,” he added.
He explained that the burned area consists of two categories: concession land and community land or forest areas.
The majority of fires occurred in West Kalimantan with an area of 38,310.86 hectares, followed by Riau with 15,738.92 hectares and South Kalimantan with 8,019.63 hectares.
Meanwhile, the other three priority provinces recorded lower burned areas: Central Kalimantan with 7,634.46 hectares, South Sumatra with 1,926.23 hectares, and Jambi with 379 hectares.
Suharyanto explained that the burned area data was obtained through a multi-layered monitoring process.
The Ministry of Forestry, together with the Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency (BMKG), first identified hotspots using satellite data. Hotspots with high confidence levels were then verified through air patrols using helicopters and ground patrols to confirm whether the point was indeed a fire or merely from other heat sources.
Based on these verification results, personnel then determined the areas that were actually burned to be further handled through ground and air firefighting operations.
“This is how we found the areas that were truly burned. We then extinguished them with ground and air operations,” he said.
With 71,069.65 hectares successfully extinguished, the remaining burned area currently targeted for handling is approximately 939.45 hectares. Suharyanto said that the firefighting process for this remaining area is currently being carried out today.
Although the burned area has shrunk, BNPB remains vigilant because there is still potential for new fire points to emerge. In addition, fires that had previously been extinguished can also reignite due to the characteristics of peatlands.
“Will this 939.45 hectares be reduced after being extinguished today, and tomorrow less? Hopefully it will decrease. But sometimes it doesn’t decrease significantly because new fire points are also found today, or old fires that had already been extinguished suddenly reignite. That is the difficulty with peatlands in these six priority provinces,” he explained.
Source: Press Release of the Government Communication Agency (Bakom) of the Republic of Indonesia
