Untimely rain helps efforts to reduce forest fire in Indonesia: official

An official at Indonesia's National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) said on Monday that untimely rain season has helped efforts to reduce the number of hotspots in Indonesia's Sumatra and Kalimantan islands at present, adding that the 'wet dry season' has reduced the hotspots by 61 percent compared to they were last year.

Cited the agency's hotspot records, BNPB Spokesperson Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said that number of hotspots of forest fire in Sumatra and Kalimantan stood at 12,884 as of August this year, or 61 percent lower than 32,734 recorded in the same period last year.

"Among the factors was the weather. September used to see critical moment of dry season in Indonesia, but this year rain season would start in September. The rain would cover areas in southern side of equatorial line," Sutopo said in his office here.

It makes forests in Indonesia's northern side of equatorial line must get more attention as they were prone from fire, Sutopo added. Provinces in the northern equatorial line identified of prone from forest fires among others Riau, West Kalimantan and Central Kalimantan.

Sutopo said that Indinesian task force to address forest fire conducts regular air patrol to monitor the forest fires in the detected areas.

According to Sutopo, at present the BNPB has detected 135 hotspots in the country which have the potential to widespread into forest fires, in which 85 of them were detected in Riau province. He added that the most regency sees the forest fire in the province was Rokan Ilir. The haze from forest fire in the regency flew out to neighboring state of Singapore.

Despite the improved efforts conducted by central and regional governments to address the annual forest fire, man-made fires in the forest were still occurs at present. Sutopo said that this year the fires raze plantations located outside of areas licensed for plantation industries. The fires were seen of engulfing plantations ran by locals and conserved land.

"Probably it would be hard task to eliminate forest fire into a zero-level. Indonesian people were customized to open areas in the forest by simply torching fire to the wood. What we can do now is to minimize the fire," he added.

The haze from Indonesia's forest fire has blanketed Singapore in the last few days, making air quality in the state city down to unhealthy level. Singapore environment agency said that the air quality has dropped to its worst level since the massive forest fire that occurred in Indonesia that took place from July to October last year. Endit