Riau residents wake up to a blue sky after rain
Riau residents wake up to a blue sky after rain
JAKARTA (JP): People in Pekanbaru, the provincial capital of
Riau, celebrated a haze-free, sunny day yesterday after overnight
heavy rain.
Smoke continued to hang over the town, but it did not affect
morning visibility and flights at Simpang Tiga Airport returned
to normal.
Two hours of rain came as a surprise to the city as Indonesia
is in the midst of a prolonged dry season.
Some people said the rain refilled their wells which had dried
up in the past month, while flooding was reported in the downtown
area.
Forest fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan, the Indonesian half of
Borneo island, have contributed to the haze in the past two
months. Nearby airports have been intermittently closed due to
low visibility.
The National Aviation and Aeronautical Institute has
identified some 500 hot spots across the country detected by
satellites since May.
President Soeharto banned Tuesday the use of fire to clear
land for cultivation.
A Reuters reporter who toured South Sumatra Tuesday saw a
series of uncontrolled scrub fires, some as high as five meters,
dotted across the province, which lies across the Strait of
Malacca from the Malay peninsula.
Singapore and Malaysia have issued health warnings to citizens
about the dangerously high level of smoke pollution.
Malaysia has called the pollution a national disaster and
launched cloud seeding operations to induce rain and clear the
air.
Kuala Lumpur woke to blue skies for the first time in eight
days yesterday, but officials conceded that Mother Nature was
partly responsible for the good weather.
Deputy director general of the Malaysian meteorological
department, Chong Ah Look, said visibility had improved by seven
kilometers in most areas in Kuala Lumpur from about two
kilometers two days earlier.
"The cloud seeding operation has been quite successful in
expediting rainfall to alleviate the haze, although a natural
downpour late Tuesday also helped ease the situation," Chong told
AFP.
The department launched the eight-day exercise Monday to
relieve Kuala Lumpur from the smothering haze which is blamed on
forest fires in Sumatra.
While Malaysia has previously seeded clouds to boost water
supplies during the intermonsoon season from September to
November, it is the first time it has been employed to clear the
smoke.
Chong acknowledged the program was merely "temporary relief"
to clear the smoke. "But even temporary measures may be useful,"
he said, rejecting criticism that the 50,000 ringgit (US$17,000)
exercise was a waste of taxpayers' money.
Haze particles caused by forest burning in Indonesia
highlighted the local air pollution problem, caused mainly by the
country's 7.2 million cars and millions of motorcycles, he said.
"We need to remove the sources of pollution -- from forest
fires in Indonesia to local sources such as open burning and
vehicles," he said.
Chong said a possible change in wind direction toward the east
would further reduce the smoke, although it was still too early
to tell. (amd)