Indonesia: Thousands travelers stranded at Pekanbaru on thick smokes

Antara 27 Sep 15;

Pekanbaru (ANTARA News) - Indonesia still looks helpless in dealing with thick smokes causing inconvenience including disrupting flight schedules from and to a number of cities.

The government has utilized all resources it has but apparently failed to put out forest and bush fires spewing the black smokes to the air

Thousands of travelers were stranded on Sunday in Pekanbaru, the capital city of Riau after tens of flights were canceled on thick smokes blanketing the airport of Sultan Syarif Kasim II.

The visibility at the airport is only from 50 meters to 300 meters making it impossible for an aircraft to take off and land at the airport.

"Until mid day today 36 flights schedule were already canceled on bad weather," Air Port Duty Manager of the airport Hasnan said.

Hasnan said normally everyday the airport recorded around 8,000 travelers arriving at and departing from the airport.

Long delay forces the travelers to demand for a refund for their tickets or reschedule their flights. Some of them plan to travel by sea or by cars.

In other areas such as in Palangka Raya, Central Kalimantan, the people also still complained inconvenience such as about difficulty to breath on dense and dirty smokes.

Many people have suffered respiratory track infection because of the dirty smokes.

The condition on Sunday, however, was not as worse as on Saturday when visibility is between 10-20 meters in some places in the provincial city.

The organization of environmentalists (Walhi) of Central Kalimantan sharply criticized the government for failure to anticipate and take steps to prevent the annual problem.

The country has faced the problem over forest and bush fires every year in dry season.

This year the drought is worse with the El Nino weather phenomenon.

Singapore and Malaysia have protested Indonesian failure to cope with the forest fires that also pollute their air. (*)


RI remains alert as efforts to put out fires continue
Apriadi Gunawan and N. Adri, The Jakarta Post 27 Sep 15;

With the government’s recovery efforts progressing much slower than expected, land and forest fires have continued to raze many parts of the country, creating problems not only for locals but also those living in neighboring regions.

The Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency’s (BMKG) Pekanbaru station reported on Saturday that despite zero hot spots detected in Riau, the province was severely blanketed by haze produced by land and forest fires in neighboring provinces.

Of the 71 hot spots recorded on Saturday, 55 were located in South Sumatra, 12 in Lampung, three in Bangka Belitung and one in North Sumatra, according to the station.

Although no hot spots were found in Riau, the country’s largest oil-producing region remained vulnerable to thick haze as wind brought smoke produced by the fires to the north and southeast.

Station head Sugarin said Riau’s Indragiri Hulu and Pelalawan regencies were the worst hit by smoke on Saturday as visibility in the regions stood at 50 meters and 100 m, respectively.

“[Smoke] causes limited visibility in many regions. In Pekanbaru municipality, visibility was recorded at only 1,000 meters while in Dumai 2,000 meters,” Sugarin said, as quoted by Antara news agency.

Over the past several weeks, pollution originating from fires in peatland and plantations has hit several regions in Sumatra and Kalimantan, particularly West Sumatra, Riau, Jambi, South Sumatra, West Kalimantan and Central Kalimantan.

The ongoing haze crisis has also been exacerbated by this year’s prolonged dry season triggered by the El Niño weather phenomenon.

Soon after his inauguration on Sept. 9, the new chief of the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB), Willem Rampangilei, said the agency aimed to clear up the haze blanketing Sumatra in two weeks.

Among indicators of success, he said, were airports in the regions operating normally without disruption from haze, sending students back to school and reducing symptoms of acute respiratory infections (ISPA).

Approaching the end of the month, however, the government-led recovery efforts have been showing little progress, as the numbers of flight delays and detected hot spots continue to fluctuate.

In Pekanbaru, more than a dozen flights to and from Sultan Syarif Kasim II International Airport (SSK II) experienced delays on Saturday on account of poor visibility. Meanwhile, in North Sumatra, two flights scheduled to depart for Pekanbaru and Penang, Malaysia, from Kualanamu International Airport were also delayed due to a similar reason.

In East Kalimantan, fires that started on Wednesday to Friday have also burned down some 200 hectares in the Samboja Lestari orangutan sanctuary, located some 50 kilometers north of Balikpapan.

Contacted on Saturday, Samboja Police general crimes unit head Adj. First. Insp. Sriyanto said the police had questioned six people thus far to find the source of the fires.

The high intensity of haze has also forced the Palangkaraya municipal administration in Central Kalimantan to give students one week off from school, starting from Friday.