"Alhamdulillah (Thank God), the air is fresher although a thin layer of smoke remains, hopefully it will rain more which will completely put out the forest and land fire," said Salbi, a Sampit resident, here on Wednesday.
Weather in Sampit has been fairly clean recently although people still have to see the blue sky lasting from morning until noon. The wind is quite strong and the air, too, is cold. People expect that it will rain again.
According to the data obtained from the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Station at the Haji Asan Airport, Sampit on Wednesday morning said there are no hotspots in East Kotawaringin, Katingan and Seruyam district.
Also, the area that was covered by smoke is drastically receding.
Horizontal visibility throughout the morning, and until afternoon, was also recorded as being quite good, between 800 to 1,000 meters. This is much better than the severe conditions seen till now when the visibility was only about 10 to 300 meters.
However, everybody is reminded to remain at standby because potentially, smoke could again return. Peat fires have been noticed up to several meters deep in the ground, so the current rainfall may not extinguish the fire in the ground completely.
"Reports of zero hot spots could be because the satellite may be unable to penetrate into the thick peat layer. The rainfall that occurred in the last couple of days could have extinguished just the fire on the surface. Satellites can only take pictures at the surface level, and underground conditions may not be detected," Head of Haji Asan Sampit Airport weather station, Yulida Warni, said here on Wednesday.
Yulida asked all the people to pray for rain. Moreover, the current joint team is having difficulty in extinguishing the fire as most hotspots were located in very remote areas and were difficult to reach. Also, the fire extinguishing efforts were often hampered due to low visibility.
Although the smoke has already reduced significantly, local authorities have still kept the oxygen house and shelters on standby at several locations.
The local authority is still preparing in anticipation of the smoke plumes becoming denser again.(*)
Editor: Heru Purwanto
Copyright © ANTARA 2015
