Late response to forest fires

By Emmy Hafild

JAKARTA (JP): Forest and land fires are raging again in Sumatra and Kalimantan.

And the resulting haze is troubling Malaysia, Singapore and even Thailand.

It is estimated that some 20 million people have sustained health troubles because of the haze.

Unless my memory fails me, this is the third time in six years that we have had a situation like this, the preceding two being in 1991 and 1994.

Small fires occur every year, but since 1980s a long dry season has always brought about forest and land fires in these two islands.

Our reaction, however, is always the same.

We are late to respond to the situation and tend to dismiss the possibility that the fires will gain intensity and cover wider areas.

Also we do not show a reaction until our neighboring countries lodge embarrassing protests.

What's worse now is that our neighboring countries have taken the initiative of putting out the fires.

They have sent, ahead of the Indonesian government, thousands of volunteer fire-fighters and fire-fighting equipment to the fires.

We should have had enough experience with the misery brought about by these fires.

In 1982/1983, when fires burnt 3.7 million hectares of forest in East Kalimantan, millions of people suffered from the extraordinary heat -- it was hot at daybreak as at 12.00 noon -- forcing people to flee, and causing them near starvation.

Since then there have been discussions about making fire- fighting equipment and aircraft available.

Many seminars have been held since the 1994 smoke problem. In 1994 the government even went so far as to guarantee that there would be no more forest fires.

In those years the Indonesian Environmental Forum (WALHI) took part in discussions and seminars on land clearing without using fire.

A WALHI member group from East Kalimantan, PLASMA, was once involved in a plan to design an Early Warning System to detect fires in their earliest stages -- in cooperation with the local administration and military authorities -- under the sponsorship of the German government's GTZ program through the ProLH project.

The whole thing has disappeared into thin air now, however.

Three years have elapsed fruitlessly. The only progress we have made is that we can monitor through satellite imaging where the hot spots are.

We cannot, however, anticipate fires earlier or localize them to prevent them from gutting larger areas.

We have yet to learn to put out fires jointly. Nor can we control the conduct of timber estate companies and ensure that they will not burn forest.

The government is very slow to react to and to anticipate these fires.

Nor is there any anticipation of how to handle problems related to community health problems arising from the smoke.

No masks are readily available.

There is no effort to disseminate information about smoke- related health hazards.

And community health centers, especially in rural areas, are not prepared to treat smoke-affected patients.

Masks are scarce now in Pontianak, Banjarmasin, Palangkaraya Jambi and Riau.

If this is happening in cities. What about rural areas? Where can rural people get masks and medical treatment?

Early in March this year the Meteorological and Geophysical Agency made public its forecast of a prolonged dry season.

In the very same month State Minister of Environmental Affairs Sarwono Kusumaatmadja warned the public that forest fires and famine were likely. The first forest fire was detected in mid July.

At the end of July Sarwono said forest fires were gutting greater areas. Malaysia and Singapore felt the effects of the smoke in early August. Flights began to be disturbed early that month too.

The question is, why did we only take concrete action toward putting out the fires only in the third week of September?

How could this be?

Did our decision makers fail to see the urgency of this matter because the smoke had not yet reached Jakarta?

During all this time only Sarwono was clamoring about the matter, and he had no authority to mobilize resources to put out the fires.

Some government officials even went so far as to deny that the fires could cause disasters.

They were busy making statements confidently saying that we were ready to manage the fires, and that food supplies were adequate, and that rice harvests would go ahead undisturbed.

Some even refused to agree that the fires were attributable to logging companies.

They insisted that El Nino was the culprit.

It is worth asking whether or not we have learned to prepare ourselves for El Nino, because we have been feeling its impact at intervals over the last fifteen years.

Besides, can't we anticipate El Nino a long time in advance? Or, perhaps, one may wonder, our indifference all this time stems from our unwillingness to see the truth, our arrogance or indeed our own ignorance.

If we had learned from our experiences in 1982, 1987, 1991 and 1994, we should have been well prepared for this El Nino and the story would have taken a different course.

If that had been the case, after the 1994 fires we would have conducted large-scale campaigns on the hazardous impact of smoke on health across the country.

We would have conducted these campaigns on television or through health and agricultural counselors and community health centers just as we have done with our nation-wide family planning and immunization drives.

We would have disseminated information on the ban on large- scale forest burning.

And, we would also have established fire-fighting units comprising the government, the community and private companies.

We would have established an early warning system, under which the community, companies and the government would join forces to monitor the likelihood of forest fires.

Local people and administrations would then keep an eye on estate and timber estate companies as well as transmigrants during land clearing.

We would also have mobilized funds to purchase and modify old aircraft, for example, bombers formerly used in World War II, the Dakotas and others, so that they could be used to carry water bombs to put out forest fires, as in California.

We would also have bought thousands of water bombs, which can be readily used the moment a fire outbreak is spotted.

If we had been truly committed to handling this matter back in 1994, we would now be in the midst of our Standard Operating Procedure, which would effectively combat forest fires as early as possible.

If all the above was up and running, we would have everything at our disposal so that when the Meteorological and Geophysical Agency warned of a prolonged dry season, all systems would be activated instantly.

Aircraft would be alerted and water bombs dispatched to provinces prone to forest fires.

Fire-fighting volunteers would be ready round the clock. As soon as a hot spot was found, local resources would be mobilized to extinguish the fire.

Should they fail, national resources would be mobilized. Should the fires persist, then international help would be sought.

If we had had everything ready, we would not be the center of world attention now. We would not be the object of our neighboring countries' fury and would certainly not be shamed as we are now.

Our people would not have sustained losses because of canceled flights and forest fires, because this would not have happened.

We would not be seen as a nation indifferent to environmental damage nor a nation failing to see its environmental problems -- whose impacts have crossed country borders.

Neither would we be perceived as a nation incapable of handling our own problems.

Hopefully, in three years, when El Nino comes again, we will have changed our attitude.

The writer is Director of the Indonesian Environmental Forum (WALHI)