KLH to Fully Investigate Jatiwaringin Landfill Fire, Recalls 2025 Sanctions
The Ministry of Environment (KLH) has stated that an investigation into the cause of the fire at the Jatiwaringin Final Disposal Site (TPA) in Tangerang, Banten, will commence once the firefighting efforts are complete. Deputy for Environmental Law Enforcement at KLH, Inspector General Rizal Irawan, said the current priority is extinguishing the fire and preventing the spread of smoke. “As I said yesterday, we are now focusing on extinguishing the fire and preventing its spread. It is not possible to process the crime scene to find the cause of the fire yet,” Rizal said in Tangerang on Sunday.
He noted that law enforcement efforts would be initiated after the firefighting process at the TPA Jatiwaringin is complete. The fire has been burning for six days. “We will look at law enforcement efforts after the process is finished. Then we will send a team back here,” he said.
Rizal mentioned that the TPA Jatiwaringin had received administrative sanctions from KLH in 2025 due to poor management. In addition to the sanctions, KLH instructed the regional government as the site manager to implement a controlled landfill system. “From last year to now, the efforts made by the district government have been to implement a controlled landfill. It turns out that in one year, they have only managed to complete five or six hectares. We can understand that, given the total land area is 33 hectares, it is impossible to finish in one year,” Rizal said.
He noted that the fire hotspots were located outside the zone that had been converted to a controlled landfill. “The area that caught fire is outside the controlled landfill,” Rizal explained. For now, KLH is scheduling a major evaluation of 390 landfills across Indonesia, set to begin in early August 2026. “The evaluation will be on 1 August. So all of them, around 390 landfills, will be evaluated to see which ones are compliant and which are not,” he stressed.
Deputy Minister of Environment Diaz Faisal Malik Hendropriyono previously stated that firefighting operations at the TPA Jatiwaringin continue through a joint operation involving personnel from various agencies. Thermal drones equipped with infrared cameras have been deployed to detect heat radiation and analyse the source of the fire. “So we can only conduct monitoring and analysis through drones periodically,” he said.
KLH has also deployed two mobile monitoring systems to monitor air quality at the site, measuring pollutants such as sulphur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), and particulate matter PM 1.0 and PM 2.5. “The good air quality standard is 15.5, moderate is from 15.5 to 55.5, and beyond that it is unhealthy and hazardous. It has reached a level of 1,000. So for several days it was at 1,000, but last night I saw it drop drastically,” he explained.
The characteristics of the fire are similar to peatland fires. The government, through the Ministry of Forestry, has deployed 30 personnel from the Manggala Agni team from Sulawesi and West Java. Diaz stated that these personnel have considerable experience and are equipped with special high-pressure equipment to extinguish hotspots beneath the surface of the waste piles. “Because for this landfill, it is not that watering from above is ineffective, but it is less effective. The fire continues underneath, so we need help from Manggala Agni to inject water down to the hotspots below,” he said.
The National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) together with the Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) are preparing a weather modification operation (TMC) scheme to help accelerate the extinguishing process. This aims to bring the emergency situation, which has affected approximately 15 hectares, under control. “So it is possible that a TMC operation will be conducted tomorrow. We will carry it out together with BNPB and BMKG,” Diaz said.