Jakarta (ANTARA) – The National Agency for Disaster Countermeasures (BNPB) has intensified ground and aerial firefighting operations, as well as weather modification operations to extinguish forest and land fires across West Kalimantan, Central Kalimantan, South Kalimantan, and Jambi.
Acting head of the BNPB Center for Disaster Data, Information, and Communication Berton SP Panjaitan said in Jakarta on Monday that the efforts reflected the central and local governments’ commitment to preventing the fires from spreading.
“In addition to handling incidents at the regional level, BNPB, alongside local governments and relevant agencies, continues to strengthen firefighting operations in priority areas,” he said.
According to Panjaitan, aerial operations in West Kalimantan are supported by four water-bombing helicopters, which carried out 223 water drops with a total volume of 1.052 million liters in a single day to handle fires affecting 13 hectares of land.
Weather modification operations in West Kalimantan scheduled from August 22 to 27 involved three sorties, seeding 3,000 kilograms of cloud-seeding agents, supported by ground operations by 2,751 joint personnel.
“These efforts resulted in ground firefighting operations covering 104.8 hectares of land,” he said.
Meanwhile, aerial monitoring detected 25 fire spots in Central Kalimantan. To tackle the fires, three water-bombing helicopters carried out 159 water drops, with each unit releasing four tons of water onto each detected hotspot.
“Around 55.63 hectares of land have burned, and alongside the aerial firefighting efforts, 10,700 ground personnel have been deployed in Central Kalimantan,” he said.
He further said that firefighting efforts in South Kalimantan involved two water-bombing helicopters and 714 ground personnel handling 40.9 hectares of affected land across 11 areas, with an estimated 13 hectares still actively burning on Monday.
The helicopters made a total of 243 water drops, releasing 1.02 million liters of water.
In Jambi, aerial monitoring detected 14 hotspots. As of August 23, water-bombing operations in the province have cumulatively extinguished fires across 226.9 hectares of land, supported by ongoing ground firefighting and cooling efforts.
“Hotspot monitoring and cross-sector coordination will continue to be strengthened to control the spread of the fires and minimize the impact of forest and land fires on the public,” Panjaitan said.
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Translator: M Riezko, Raka Adji
Editor: Bayu Prasetyo
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