Indonesia: Forest patrol continues in anticipation of Ell Nino-induced fires

Antara 30 Mar 19;

Jakarta (ANTARA) - The Environment and Forestry Ministry's Post Command for Forest Fire Control has continued its routine and integrated patrols to anticipate hot spots indicating of forest and land fires as moderate El Nino is expected to develop from April until July 2019.

The post command had extinguished hot spots to prevent forest fires in several provinces, Raffles B Panjaitan, the ministry's director of forest and land fire control, said in a statement here on Saturday.

They are conducting routine patrols among other things in the provinces of North Sumatra, Jambi, South Sumatra, South Kalimantan, South Sulawesi, North Sulawesi, and Southeast Sulawesi.

Integrated patrols are being carried out in West Kalimantan, Central Kalimantan and East Kalimantan Provinces.

In West Kalimantan, they patrolled 150 villages during March 1-30, 2019. In Central and East Kalimantan Provinces, they are expected to cover 36 villages during patrols to be conducted on March 25 to April 13, and again on April 21 until 30, 3019.

In the provinces of Riau and Riau Islands, they have been carrying out routine patrols and extinguished hot spots among other things in Pekanbaru, Indragiri Hulu and Dumai in Riau Province, as well as in Sei Harapan protected forest in Riau Islands Province.

Riau has declared forest fire emergency status since February 19, 2019 to October 31, 2019 (255 days), and West Kalimantan from February 12 to December 31, 2019 (323 days).

Based on Landsat imagery data, forest and land fires have gutted a total of 5,776 hectares of land.

Based on field observations, however, 3,765 ha forest and land areas were gutted by fires.

Of the total 3,765 hectares of land, 10.80 ha were in Aceh; 471.50 ha in North Sumatra; 2,778,.9 ha in Riau, 113 ha in Riau Islands, 30.05 ha in Jambi, 0.25 ha in South Sumatra, 243.03 ha in West Kalimantan, 25.40 ha in Central Kalimantan, 83.48 ha in East Kalimantan, and 10 ha in South Sulawesi.
Reporter: V irna Setyorini, Fardah
Editor: Rahmad Nasution