Haze turns day into night in parts of Riau

M. Ara Syaf, The Jakarta Post, Pekanbaru

Haze from forest fires, that have been raging in several parts of Sumatra, thickened over Riau's provincial capital, Pekanbaru, on Wednesday, where day turned into a virtual night, forcing many people to wear face masks in order to breathe.

The sun's rays were unable to penetrate the thick smoke, which blanketed the city most of the day.

However, flights to and from Pekanbaru's Sultan Syarief Qasim II airport, where the visibility was below three kilometers, operated normally. Most public activities were also conducted normally in the city.

There were no reports of people suffering from serious respiratory problems, but many had begun to wear masks to prevent health risks.

The health office in Dumai, one of the regencies in Riau worst hit by the haze, had distributed some 5,000 masks to people.

The Dumai-based PT Caltex Pacific Indonesia ordered its employees on Wednesday to use masks, a day after the foreign oil company erected a red flag signifying the dangerous level of air pollution in the town.

Caltex Communications and Media Relations Manager Poedyo Oetomo said there were no plans, however, to evacuate its employees from Dumai.

Thick haze also affected the towns of Bengkalis and Bagansiapiapi, prompting local residents to complain about the absence of effective measures by authorities to fight the fires, which have been blamed on land clearing practices.

"We hope the relevant authorities will intervene to deal with and put out the fires," Rahmat Kurniadi, a resident in Bagansiapiapi, said.

However, the provincial forestry office in Pekanbaru said on Wednesday its workers were working hard to extinguish the fires which had consumed an estimated 10 percent of the 5,000-hectare tourism forest in Dumai.

"Efforts to fight the fires are underway. The worst fires seem to be near Dumai," head of the Riau forestry office Fauzi Saleh said.

He said the joint fire-fighting team includes personnel from Caltex and state-owned oil company Pertamina.

Based on satellite monitoring, the province's Environmental Impact Control Agency (Bapedal) said at least 222 separate blazes were detected across Riau and neighboring provinces on Sumatra.

Another 38 blazes were found in Malaysia, the agency added.

Meanwhile in Jakarta, the National Flight and Aerospace Institute (Lapan) warned on Wednesday of a severe dry season to hit Indonesia in the coming months following nationwide floods and landslides that have killed more than 150 people across the country.

Bidawi Hasyim, who heads Lapan's office of application and development of remote sensing technology, said the dry season is expected to begin in June and run through August.

"After very extreme conditions such as the inordinate amount of rain currently, it will usually be followed by an extreme opposite condition, namely a dry season," he was quoted by Antara as saying.