Fire experts call for containment strategy in extinguishing blazes

By Budiman Moerdijat

SAMARINDA, East Kalimantan (JP): Fire-fighting experts, confronting raging forest fires in this province, maintain it would be better to focus on prevention efforts at this stage and let the fires burn themselves out.

The Samarinda-based Integrated Forest Fire Management (IFFM) organization -- a German-sponsored body which works with the forestry ministry -- said the fires were so widespread that extinguishing them was beyond any currently available capabilities.

"There is a strong tendency to use expensive high-tech solutions, water bombing, use of retardants, that have little or no effect as long as infrastructure and fire-fighting capacities on the ground are deficient," the IFFM said in a recent report.

"Cloud-seeding efforts under current conditions seem to be of little use other than for scientific purposes," it added.

Authorities concede that cloud-seeding, water bombing and other initiatives against the fires in recent weeks have been unsuccessful.

Fires which have consumed more than 155,000 hectares now cover such an extensive area that experts say fire-fighting efforts would be futile.

The fires are exacerbated by huge burning coal deposits below the surface.

The gravity of the situation was brought home when environmentalists and local officials took a helicopter flight around the area.

"The situation which could be observed was terrifying," the IFFM report said in quoting those who took part on the trip. "Small and large fires were burning virtually everywhere."

Hundreds of soldiers and civilians have been deployed against the fires, which are mainly concentrated in the Kutai National Park and Bukit Soeharto forest, respectively north and south of Samarinda.

They are fighting a losing battle.

The fires have heightened fears of a repeat of last year's devastating haze, when blazes in Indonesia blanketed much of Southeast Asia with choking smog.

The IFFM rang a note of realism in its report by essentially recommending that Indonesia should count its losses and contain the fires, while ensuring better controls to prevent any repeat of the disaster.

Law

Plantation and timber companies have frequently been blamed for starting the blaze.

"Several large fires have been burning in forest conversion and concession areas for weeks, and though the provincial government is very serious about handling the situation, law enforcement still seems too weak and too slow to get them under control," the IFFM said in its report.

Minister of Environment Juwono Sudarsono said 65 percent of the forests razed this year belonged to commercial companies. He added that the fires were lit deliberately for land-clearing purposes.

IFFM team leader Ludwig Schindler underlined the need for the government to adopt a "comprehensive plan to prevent forest fires".

Schindler said it was time the government revised the land conversion program for a sustainable forest management system.

"Manage those forests resources sustainably because by doing so, and not with the mentality of a mining company that takes out whatever can, our resources will go a long way," he said.

"We are thinking of the future generations."

Head of the East Kalimantan Environmental Impact Management Agency, Awang Faroek, confirmed the fires razed 155,000 hectares of forest and caused more than Rp 2.6 trillion (US$220 million) in material losses in the past three months.

He said the material losses did not include damages to the province's rich forest biodiversity and long-term health costs to people in the province.

The IFFM's expertise is likely to have the most durable impact in forest management.

An eight-year-long technical cooperation project between the German and Indonesian governments, it started in 1994 with the aim of establishing a comprehensive fire management system.

The initial field study and work was conducted at Bukit Soeharto, where villagers in Karya Baru were also trained to prevent and fight forest fires in an elaborate community-based fire management concept.

Lessons learned at this location can hopefully be replicated all over the province where local fire centers will be established.

These centers will form the core of a fire management organization for the province.

IFFM has stressed that more than trained firefighters and equipment are required for Indonesia to solve its fire problem.

The country needs an entire fire management system, such as a method for detecting and reporting fires, dispatching and organizing firefighters and equipment, planning fire management budgets, an early warning system and spreading the prevention message.

IFFM urged the government to develop fire management as an integral part of the forestry curriculum, either at the university level or in the field.

Also crucial is the involvement of the local population.

"Villagers and farmers who live near the forest and timber industries are critical to fire management because they are both an important cause of fires and a potential suppression resource," the IFFM said.