Water bomber readied to fight forest fires

Water bomber readied to fight forest fires

JAKARTA (JP): The government is to dispatch a Pilatus fire
bomber to East Kalimantan to fight the spreading forest fires
there, a provincial official said yesterday.

"The National Disaster Management Coordinating Board will send
the water bomber this Friday to help fight the fires," said
Deputy Governor Suwarna Abdul Fatah, as quoted by Antara.

He said 1,335 hectares of land and forest in the province have
caught fire in the last few weeks, of which 1,270 hectares is in
the Kutai National Park.

The ensuing smog has forced several flights from and to the
province's two main airports, Sepinggan Airport in Balikpapan and
Temindung Airport in Samarinda, to be delayed over the past few
days.

Temindung Airport was closed for several hours yesterday
morning because visibility was reduced to only 1,500 meters, far
below the normal visibility of 6,000 meters.

The delayed aircraft were those plying the Samarinda-Merak,
Samarinda-Data Dawai, and Samarinda-Tarakan routes. Flights
resumed at 9.45 a.m. after the haze cleared, Antara said.

"We are worried that the 1997 forest fires might recur,"
Temindung Airport manager Ratno said.

Yesterday, satellite imaging by the U.S. National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recorded 40 hot spots in the
province, 18 of which were thought to have caused the haze, the
news agency said.

The Environmental Impact Management Agency (Bapedal) here
suspects the recent fires, many in plantation and logging
concessions were man-made.

Last year, forest and brush fires, mainly on Kalimantan and
Sumatra islands and blamed on slash-and-burn farmers and
plantation companies, spread choking smog over huge tracts of
Southeast Asia for weeks from mid-1997, triggering health alarms
in neighboring countries.

The worst of the smog came from burning peat land, made drier
by the drought induced by the El Nino phenomenon in the Pacific
Ocean which affects global weather patterns. (aan)