Bamby Bucket to be used to fight West Java fires
Bamby Bucket to be used to fight West Java fires
JAKARTA (JP): The Indonesian Air Force demonstrated the United
States' water bombing method called Bamby Bucket at Halim
Perdanakusuma airbase yesterday which will be used to fight
forest fires in West Java.
The water bombing operation will use a specially designed
bucket which will be suspended from a Super Puma SH 330
helicopter.
Deputy commander of the Atang Senjaya Air Force Base in
Bogor, West Java, Col. M. Pandjaitan, said the bucket can hold
1,300 liters of water.
"The water will be dumped from a height of 100 feet (33
meters) to shower 4,200 square meters," he said.
Also on display yesterday was a research plane jointly
operated by Australia and Japan which arrived earlier in the
morning.
The Fokker-27 plane will be used for research missions to
identify chemical elements of the haze and measure the air
quality of haze-stricken areas in Indonesia.
Head of the Meteorological and Geophysics Agency, Sri Diharto,
said the government invited the team after the Australian Embassy
informed them of the plane.
Diharto said Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and
Industrial Research Organization and Japan's Meteorological
Research Institute have worked together on similar missions such
as bush fires in Australia's Northern Territory.
It has yet to be determined where the plane will conduct its
mission.
"It is still being discussed whether we have to fly to
Kalimantan or Sumatra," CSIRO's Jorge Jensen said.
Meanwhile, three Hercules C-130 planes from the United States
Air Force entered their second of water bombing in the Wilis and
Arjuna mountains, East Java.
"The water bombing operation will last for eight days," field
commander Col. Harold Reed of Wyoming's Air National Guard told
journalists in Surabaya yesterday.
Harold said the U.S. planes can fly 13 sorties a day with each
plane carrying 1,200 liters of water.
Each sortie takes 30 minutes.
Harold said that the water bombing operation in East Java is
difficult since the fires occur on mountain slopes.
The Rp 18.7 billion (US$5 million) operation is funded by the
United States government. (10/nur)