Indonesia: Thick Haze Paralyzes Jambi Airport

Jakarta Globe 24 Sep 12;

Jambi. Thick smoke from ground and forest fires have severely curtailed visibility and forced the closure of the Sultan Thaha Syaifuddin airport in Jambi city on Monday, an airport executive said.

The airport was closed for landing as visibility was down to 500 to 1,000 meters. The day's first scheduled flight at 6:00 a.m. had to be delayed by about 30 minutes.

The first flight scheduled to land at the airport, a Lion Air flight from Jakarta that should have landed at 7:30 a.m., was not able to do so and was diverted to the airport in Palembang.

Alzog Pendra, the operations manager of the Jambi airport, said they have warned aircraft against forcing to land if visibility was not permitting.

The thick haze began to disrupt the flight schedule at the Jambi airport on Sunday, Alzog said.

On Sunday, the same first flight from Jakarta operated by Lion air also failed to land because of the low visibility and was diverted to Palembang in neighboring South Sumatra. But similar low visibility due to haze in Palembang' Sultan Mahmud Badaruddin airport forced the plane to return to Jakarta instead.

A Garuda flight from Jakarta that had been due to arrive on Sunday morning only managed to land in Jambi at 1 p.m. after visibility improved.

An air pollution control index showed that in Jambi city, the air was entering the level of serious pollution, with smoke and ash at 90 particles per million over the past three days.

Bambang Priyanto, the deputy mayor of Jambi, said he has asked the city's health office to begin distributing free masks to the public because of the worsening air quality there.

"We have prepared some 70,000 masks in anticipation of the smoke," he said. The city, Bambang added, was also currently considering whether to temporarily close down schools, especially for kindergarten and primary schools.

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Ongoing Jambi Fires Spark Public Health Fears
Jakarta Globe 26 Sep 12;

Jambi. The thick and chocking haze from ground and forest fires that has blanketed Jambi for the past three months has pushed up the number of sufferers of respiratory tract ailments, health officials said on Tuesday.

Andi Pada, from the Jambi provincial health office, said the number of people suffering from respiratory tract ailments in the Sumatran province has risen to 3,020, with 1,241 of them in the capital.

Batanghari district followed with 943 people, East Tanjung Jabung with 581 and Muarojambi with 455. There were no reports yet from the seven other districts and municipalities in Jambi.

Andi said the standard air pollution index in Jambi city had already reached unhealthy levels at more than 100 particles per million.

The local health office has already distributed some 3,000 masks to the population, especially for motorists.

Zubaidi, the head of the Jambi Disaster Mitigation Agency, said that a team from the Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT) was attempting to artificially induce rains in the area by spreading salt in the sky over Jambi.

However, he said, the rain-making often failed because of the scarcity of clouds and the very dry nature of the air.

“But this Tuesday morning, rains have begun to fall, although not heavily,” Zubaidi said.

“Hopefully there will be enough clouds over Jambi in the next few days for the rains to overcome the problems of smoke and ground and forest fires in Jambi.”

A thin rain began to fall over Jambi city at around 7:30 a.m. but only lasted for 15 minutes, failing to rid the city of the thick and chocking smoke.

Even after the rain, visibility was well below one kilometer and monitoring from the Jambi Environmental Agency showed the air pollution index at 95 to 97 particles per million.

By 8 a.m., no flights had been able to land at Jambi’s Sultan Taha Syaifuddin Airport because of the low visibility. The first airplanes usually land at the airport at 7 a.m. Alzog Pendra, the operational manager of the airport, said that planes can only land if visibility is at least two kilometers.

Meanwhile, environmental activists in Jambi on Tuesday criticized the local governments for its slow response to the haze problem that began three months ago.

Rakhmat Hidayat, the executive director of the Indonesian Conservation Community and the Jambi Conservation Information Stall, deplored the local government for not acting quickly to deal with the growing haze problems in the region.

He said that the government was not fast enough in preventing the use of fire for land clearing, both by large plantation companies and by individual farmers.

The practice of clearing land with fire is outlawed but enforcement has been hard because of the limited funding and personnel.

Rakhmat said that thousands of plantations and forests in Jambi were now on fire, mostly intentionally, but the local government has not taken any actions against those making the fires.

He also said that the government was late in distributing masks to minimize the number of sufferers of respiratory tract ailments.

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