"Usually haze occurs in May-June. But, this time, the haze has happened in January and February in Riau and West Kalimantan," BNPB spokesman Sutopo stated here, recently.
He predicted that the drought this year will be drier than that in 2013 because of possible weak El Nino which is expected to develop later this year.
The agency organized a coordinating meeting on forest and plantation fires on Tuesday (Feb. 11).
The meeting, chaired by the BNBP chief, Syamsul Maarif, was attended by representatives from the coordinating ministry for peoples welfare, the forestry ministry, the agriculture ministry, the environmental affairs ministry, the home affairs ministry, the Indonesian defense forces (TNI), the national police, and regional disaster mitigation offices from Jambil, South Sumatra, North Sumatra, Riau, West Kalimantan, Central Kalimantan, South Kalimantan, and East Kalimantan.
Maarif reminded all stakeholders to implement the presidential instruction no. 16/2011 on the Forest and Plantation Fires Control Intensification.
He stated that an incident like the one in 2013, when Sumatras haze affected Singapore and Malaysian, should not happen this year.
The government will address the forest fire problems through land and aerial operations.
The land operation will involve among others, military officers, police, forest fire brigade unit, and civilian security personnel.
The aerial operation will include water bombing from air and weather modification or artificial rain technologies.
The BNBP will rent the Be-200 amphibian plane and the Kamov helicopter from Russia for water bombing purposes, Sutopo clarified.
The NOAA Satellite detected 458 hotspots of forest and plantation fires across Sumatra on Tuesday afternoon.
Most of the hotspots were located in northern Sumatra with a total of 430 hotspots, Hendra Suwarta, the head of the Medan meteorological, climatology and geophysics agency (BMKG)s data and information service, stated on Wednesday.
Northern Sumatras 430 hotspots included 75 in Aceh Darussalam, 40 in West Sumatra, 242 in Riau and 73 in North Sumatra Province.
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