Officials to investigate hot spots in Sumatra

Officials to investigate hot spots in Sumatra

JAKARTA (AFP): Environmental authorities Monday warned Indonesia could be heading for a repeat of the hazes disasters of the last two years after choking smog blanketed a central Sumatran province.

Authorities said they were sending teams to Riau province as evidence mounted that haze was quickly spreading over the area.

M. Alamsyah, the head of the regional Environmental Impact Agency based in the Riau capital of Pekanbaru, said the number of hotspots had soared from about 80 on February 28 to 165 on March 3.

Alamsyah said his office sent teams to check on the hotspots, centers of heat recorded on satellite images of the area.

"But this seems to be just like in the previous years, the use of fire for land clearing," Alamsyah said.

The increasing number of hotspots in Riau coincided with the end of the rainy season about two weeks ago, said Anwar of the Riau province meteorology office.

"We do not seem to have learned from experience, I think we are heading to the same disaster as last year," Anwar said, adding that thick smoke now covered the area early in the day only to dissipate by midmorning.

"It is definitely smoke and not mist, because peoples' eyes hurt in the morning," he said.

Visibility in Pekanbaru has been greatly reduced by the smoke in the mornings for the past week, Anwar said.

On Monday, visibility was at 400 metres at 6:00 a.m. (23:00 GMT Sunday), 500 meters an hour later and 800 meter at 8:00 a.m. (01:00 GMT). But strong winds quickly cleared the sky and at 9:00 a.m., visibility was at 1,200 meters.

"We have only had one flight delay on Saturday morning, but with the present pattern of poor visibility, I have heard that the aviation authorities will move flights arriving and taking off from Pekanbaru to a later time in the day," he said.

Alamsyah said that most of the hotspots were in areas known to be used for plantations, and only a small number were detected over forests.

Last year, smoke from forest and scrub fires on the Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Borneo hit hazardous levels affecting air traffic and public health for weeks.

Riau was one of the hardest hit by fires in 1999, with the number of hotspots detected daily across the province reaching around 500 at the height of summer.

Most of the fires were started by villagers and forestry firms clearing land, officials have said. Despite a government ban on slash and burn land clearing, the practice continued unabated, including by large plantation firms.

Indonesian authorities have blamed a lack of manpower, equipment, funding and knowhow for their failure to control the fires.

Fires in Sumatra and Borneo covered much of the region with a choking haze for months in 1997 and to a lesser extent in 1998, causing extensive health and traffic problems. The fires were estimated to have gutted some 10 million hectares (24.7 million acres) of forests.