BNPB: Forest and land fire on Batam's Trans Barelang Road successfully extinguished

The National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB) has stated that the forest and land fire (karhutla) on Jalan Trans Barelang, Batam City, Riau Islands, was successfully extinguished by a joint task force.

“Based on the report on Sunday (23/8), the fire was successfully extinguished,” said Acting Head of the BNPB Disaster Data, Information and Communication Centre, Berton SP Panjaitan, in Jakarta on Monday.

According to him, the success in controlling the blaze was due to the intensive work of the joint task force, which moved quickly to conduct ground-based firefighting less than 24 hours after the report was received by the Riau Islands Regional Disaster Management Agency (BPBD) operations control centre on Saturday (22/8).

Preliminary data estimates that the burned mineral land area covers approximately 35 hectares, and the trigger factor for the fire is under investigation by law enforcement officials.

In the process of tackling the forest and land fire, he said, a joint team was involved consisting of the Riau Islands Provincial BPBD, the Indonesian National Armed Forces (TNI), the Indonesian National Police (Polri), the Fire Department, as well as the active participation of the local community, by deploying a number of fire engines to the location.

“A number of fire engines were deployed to support ground-based firefighting,” said Berton.