Indonesia Battles Forest Fires Across Five Provinces While North Sumatra Floods Hit Thousands of Homes
Indonesia faces dual disaster: forest fires across 5 provinces burning 1,410 hectares and North Sumatra floods affecting 7,615 households. BNPB deploys 58 aircraft.
Forest and land fires scorching 1,410 hectares across five Indonesian provinces, combined with flooding that has affected more than 7,000 households in North Sumatra, have kept disaster response teams on high alert, Indonesia’s National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB) said on Friday.
Berton Panjaitan, acting head of BNPB’s Disaster Data, Information and Communication Centre, said South Papua recorded the largest area under active firefighting operations at 502 hectares, based on figures as of 7 am local time on Friday. Central Sulawesi followed at 295 hectares, Southeast Sulawesi at 257 hectares, Maluku at 182 hectares, and East Kalimantan at 174 hectares.
Berton noted a shift in where fires were breaking out. “The pattern has changed considerably,” he said in a video briefing, adding that blazes had previously been concentrated in parts of Sumatra and Kalimantan before spreading to Sulawesi, Maluku and South Papua.
58 Aircraft and Cloud-Seeding Operations Deployed
A total of 58 aircraft remained in operation across affected areas — 23 units carrying out patrol, surveillance and weather modification missions, and 35 helicopters conducting water-bombing runs. Berton said 23,900 kilogrammes of cloud-seeding materials, including salt and dry ice, had been used over Kalimantan and South Sumatra.
Unhealthy air quality levels were recorded in Sendawar in the West Kutai district, as well as at three monitoring stations in Nusantara, Indonesia’s new capital located in East Kalimantan.
Flooding in North Sumatra
Separately, Berton said flooding in North Sumatra had affected 7,615 households. Seven provinces — Aceh, Lampung, Bengkulu, Riau, West Sumatra, South Sumatra and North Sumatra — were placed under heightened alerts for heavy to very heavy rainfall.
Weather forecasts at the time indicated the potential for moderate to heavy rainfall across wide areas of Indonesia, including parts of Sumatra, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Java, Bali, Maluku, North Maluku, West and East Nusa Tenggara, and Papua.
