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)