UN official says E. Kalimantan fires are 'big disaster'

UN official says E. Kalimantan fires are 'big disaster'

JAKARTA (JP): At least 10,000 firefighters and significant
international support would be needed to extinguish East
Kalimantan's raging forest fires, according to United Nations
officials who have described the situation as "a very, very big
disaster".

A United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC)
team said here yesterday the situation was so grave that tens of
thousands of firefighters were needed to be mobilized along with
air support through water bombing if efforts to put out the fires
were to succeed.

Accompanying the UNDAC team, the UN resident coordinator in
Indonesia, Ravi Rajan, said "at this point" Indonesia no longer
had "all the resources that it needs" to deal with the fires
despite its efforts so far.

"We (the United Nations) certainly cannot mobilize the tens of
thousands of people needed, but we'll help by providing expertise
to the Indonesian government, mobilizing international aid and
helping those (donating countries) in dialogs with the Indonesian
government on what it needs," he said.

The three member UNDAC team, however, did not give complete
details of its findings yesterday, saying a full 20-page report
would be presented in Geneva on Tuesday.

The team spent six days in East Kalimantan earlier this month,
visiting fire sites around Balikpapan, Samarinda, Kutai National
Park and the Bukit Soeharto forest reserve.

The UNDAC team was made up of Finnish natural disaster
management expert Simon Wecksten, Swiss food security and refugee
expert Henry-Franois Morahd and Gambian forestry specialist Max
Bi-Mass Taal.

They were accompanied yesterday during a media briefing here
by Rajan and UNDAC leader Erik Haegglund.

The fires have reportedly claimed at least 226,000 hectares of
forest in East Kalimantan, incurring financial losses of more
than Rp 4 trillion.

Haegglund said the UNDAC team was impressed with the
perseverance of people on the ground in their efforts to put out
the fires with extremely limited means.

The remoteness of scattered fire locations, shortage of water,
lack of personnel and lack of water bombers were among the
factors the UNDAC team said were hampering fire fighting efforts
in the province.

Given the magnitude of the disaster and extreme dry weather,
Mohrahd said the fires would most likely be extinguished by rain
rather than by human efforts.

Mohrahd's colleague, Wecksten -- also an experienced
firefighter -- said Indonesia, however, still needed the support
of the international community in handling its current fire
disaster.

Indonesia suffered from its worse ever forest fires last year
with an estimated one million hectares of brush and forest in
Sumatra and Kalimantan going up in smoke.

The fires caused heavy smog in areas as far away as
neighboring Malaysia and Singapore.

Antara quoted an official with the Provincial Environmental
Impact Management Agency, Awang Faouk Ishak, as saying yesterday
that 700 rangers had arrived in East Kalimantan, thus increasing
the number of firefighters -- including soldiers, students and
residents -- to more than 2,000. (aan)