Kalimantan fires cause $220m loss
JAKARTA (JP): Parts of Kalimantan continued to be ravaged by fire yesterday as residents in Samarinda, East Kalimantan, were again forced to don face masks in a province which has seen 127,770 hectares of forest burn and incur over Rp 2.2 trillion (US$220 million) in material losses in three months.
Head of the East Kalimantan Environmental Impact Management Agency, Awang Faroek, told The Jakarta Post that material losses did not include damages to the province's rich forest biodiversity and long-term health costs to people living in the province.
According to Awang, nearly 40 percent of fire-ravaged forests in the province occurred in areas owned by timber estate companies. Financial losses in the timber estate areas were put at about Rp 738 billion.
But the area which suffered the highest losses was the Kutai National Park of the Kutai regency, with more than Rp 790 billion in financial losses despite the fact that the area of burned forest totaled only 39,542 hectares, or 30 percent of the total forest burned in the past three months.
"It's because the park contains the richest natural biodiversity of all the forest razed," Awang told the Post by telephone from the provincial capital of Samarinda.
Although the total area burned was relatively "small" compared to the province's total forest areas of more than 21 million hectares, Awang said the impact could be far more reaching than last year's fires.
At least 300,000 hectares was ravaged by forest and brush fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan last year. In East Kalimantan fires destroyed 37,092 hectares of forest.
The disaster sent smog all over Southeast Asia, inflicting more than $1.3 billion in smog damages to Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, 90 percent of which was attributed to short-term health costs.
Awang said that prior to last year, the largest fires in East Kalimantan was in 1982 when the El Nio weather phenomenon hit the province and exacerbated the fires which eventually destroyed some 418,000 hectares of forest.
"Judging from the vastness of areas burned in the last three months only, the impact of this year's fires could be higher," he said.
Concerning the health impact, Awang said that in February and March alone more than 5,000 people in Samarinda had been inflicted with smog-related illnesses and diseases induced by a lack of clean water.
At least 3,404 people suffered respiratory ailments, 1,052 came down with diarrhea and hundreds others caught pneumonia, got eye irritations and asthma, he said.
Visibility in the city was only 100 meters yesterday, Awang said, forcing people to done masks to protect themselves from poor air quality, he said.
Awang said concerted efforts to put out and contain the fires had been done by the provincial administration in cooperation with local people and the Armed Forces.
He said between 200 and 300 people were mobilized daily to fight the fires on land, and two water-bomber aircraft -- Transal and Pilatus Poiter -- from the air.
When asked about the results of the efforts, Awang said: "Not bad."
"One effort yet to yield results is cloud seeding, the weather has been unfriendly," Awang said.
Another effort would be a labor-intensive fire-fighting program sponsored by the United Nations Development Program, to be coordinated by the office of the state minister of environment, he said.
Under the program, some 1,000 people would be involved in fighting fires for two consecutive weeks with daily wages of Rp 7,500, he said. (aan)