C. Kalimantan awaits rain to drive away haze
Musthofid and Dadan Wijaksana, The Jakarta Post, Palangka Raya, C. Kalimantan
Seeing commuters travel through downtown Palangka Raya with masks covering their face has been a common sight over the past three months.
Vehicles crawl along the streets, some with their headlights turned on to help the drivers see in front of them.
On each side of the streets, pedestrians, although they number only a few, commute lethargically, struggling against the cloud of smog either by using masks or simply covering the front of their face with their hands occasionally.
Palangka Rayans have been forced to cope with the irritating haze, which emits from the burned out or burning forests.
Between 400 and 500 hot spots or fires are reported to have beleaguered the town's population of 165,000, according to 2001 data.
Each hot spot may contain several fires spaced close together.
As a result, the town is continuously clouded with huge smog, which accounts for the drop in visibility and rising respiratory problems.
"What a wonderful haze paradise!" Nicola Waldes from Britain said jokingly of the adverse conditions.
The haze usually comes in the morning and disperses toward evening when the wind helps blow it away. During the day, visibility, although it ranges unpredictably from day to day, drops to about 300 meters.
Visibility can improve when rain falls once in a while, or it can worsen. Two weeks ago visibility was reduced to only between fifteen and twenty meters, which almost brought all activities in town to a halt.
"It's difficult to see where you are driving. Everyone prefers to stay at home," Adi, a taxi driver, told The Jakarta Post.
Children are deterred from attending school with the local administration announcing optional days off. Work hours at a number of governmental and private offices have been cut.
Workers come to offices only to knock off earlier than normal.
The accumulation of haze has made the concentration of dust particles in the air increase to a hazardous 1,000 particulate micron (PM) over the past few weeks, which has exceeded the tolerable level of 300PM.
Five people were reported to have died from respiratory complications. Although the health office claims that the deaths were not directly caused by the smog as they had contracted acute respiratory illnesses prior to the situation, the haze had aggravated their health conditions.
Thousands of people are also reported to be suffering from breathing problems, which range from minor complaints to the acute.
Except for last week's arrival of government officials to Palangka Raya, the Tjilik Riwut Airport, which is seven kilometers northeast of the city, has hardly been accessible.
A Fokker aircraft sat idle at the air base, whose runway is 2,100 meters long and 30 meters wide.
With visibility dropping significantly below the minimum required range of 1,000 meters, flights have been canceled since August. "It would be too risky to fly if visibility was around 200 or 300 meters," Yadie, an airport attendant, said.
The haze adversely affects the economy. The closure of the airport has subsequently affected the hospitality industry. Many hotels are complaining about a drop in the occupancy rate by almost fifty percent.
"We used to be fully booked but now we generally have 20 of the 30 rooms filled," Rusdi, who works at the Lampung Hotel's reception counter, said.
The people of Palangka Raya and its vicinity feel resigned to dealing with the haze, which comes every year. The haze has been worse than usual once every five years, as it has been this year.
This season has witnessed a worse haze problem than in 1997.
On a much wider scale, haze from Kalimantan in general has also spread to neighboring countries with Malaysia and Singapore complaining about occasional disruption to air traffic.
As usual, the prolonged dry season, land clearing and illegal logging have been blamed for the fires.
For travelers on buses going along the Trans-Kalimantan route, which encompasses Banjarmasin in South Kalimantan, Palangka Raya, Sampit and Pangkalan Bun, the westernmost part of the province, their visibility is obscured as soon as they enter the Kuala Kapuas district, about 100 kilometers south of the provincial capital.
Smoke billows into the air from raging fires, which are scattered across the vast landscape of bushes and plants. Some hot spots are still smoldering, which causes more smoke.
Illegal logging has contributed to the fires. Uncontrolled exploitation has left forests barren, and has subsequently made the soil unable to retain water.
With little water on hand, the forest has become tinder dry and is consequently more of a fire risk.
Hundreds of thousands of hectares are reported to be affected by the fires. Conditions have worsened over the fact that the area is mostly made up of peatland.
With the dry season exacerbating conditions, the peatland has become more vulnerable to fire.
The Palangka Raya-based Center for International Cooperation in the Management of Tropical Peatland (CIMTROP) cautioned that the fires had endangered the biodiversity and ecosystem of the peatland.
CIMTROP Director Suwido Limin estimated that almost half of the peatland area in Central Kalimantan had been destroyed by fires.
Despite the severity of the problem, little has been done to tackle the haze problem.
The local administration has teamed up with the forestry office and the military and police headquarters have made efforts to contain the fires, but to no avail.
A lack of funding and unexperienced personnel are blamed for the failed efforts, Harun Al-Rasyid, the spokesman of the local authority, said recently.
"We have done our utmost best. But they (the fires) are too widespread to overcome," he said.
Efforts to extinguish the fires have also been carried out by CIMTROP. With its fire-fighting team, Tim Serbu Api (TSA), it said that it had fought fires by using groundwater drawn from around the hot spots.
Lamenting about the lack of support from the local administration, Suwido said they could only save a small percentage of the ravaged area.
Suwido, who said he had only 26 members on his TSA, also blamed the authorities for their indifference and the absence of prevention policies to deal with the problem.
"We wish they had acted earlier to prevent the fires from spreading. They tend to sit back and watch things worsen," he said, adding that they had turned to foreign assistance in their battle against the blaze.
Legislators are also desperate about putting out the fires, with Rinco Norkim of the National Mandate Party (PAN) saying: "I see that the authorities have done their utmost best. It's because the area is too extensive to cover that little has been done to our expectations."
Realizing that a huge loss is inevitable, Suwido and Rinco said they considered the haze problem a national disaster and that it required the central government to act.
Fully aware that the haze has become an annual problem, Rinco said that people felt resigned to facing more catastrophes in the future.
"All we can do now is to pray for the rain to come soon," he said two weeks ago.
Rain did fall last Sunday and the haze was reported to have cleared somewhat. Although the haze problem may totally disappear by the time the rainy season comes along, people will be bracing themselves for another bout of fires -- and haze -- next year.