JAKARTA \u2013 Indonesia has stepped up efforts to contain forest and land fires across six \u2060priority provinces, deploying cloud-seeding aircraft to induce rain as authorities seek to slow the haze now spreading across the region, officials said. Indonesia is facing a longer and more severe dry season this year as El Nino intensifies, raising the risk of drought, forest fires \u200band air pollution.<\/p>\n
Forestry Ministry data showed that 107,465 hectares (265,552 acres) of land \u200cwere hit \u200cby fires from January to June, a 110% increase compared \u200bwith the same period in 2023, when El Nino last affected Indonesia. \u201cWe are on alert because the weather conditions really make it possible for these fires \u2060to become larger,\u201d chief security minister Djamari Chaniago told reporters on Monday. He said there might \u2060be signs that El Nino had already reached its most intense level in Indonesia.<\/p>\n
The government has identified the six priority provinces as Riau, \u200bJambi and South Sumatra on \u2060Sumatra island, as well as West Kalimantan, Central Kalimantan, and South Kalimantan on Borneo island.<\/p>\n
Fires have also struck other provinces \u2060on the islands \u200bof Java, Papua, and Nusa Tenggara.<\/p>\n
Classes for all students \u200bhave been moved online in Pontianak, capital of West Kalimantan, after a \u200bdecline \u200cin air quality caused by the haze, the city\u2019s mayor said.<\/p>\n
Djamari said 43 helicopters and 15 fixed-wing aircraft have been deployed to put out the fires.<\/p>\n
Authorities have also conducted cloud seeding operations, shooting salt flares to stimulate \u200crainfall, but Djamari said the operations are challenging because of the scarcity of rain clouds. \u201cThat is why we closely monitor even small changes in the weather. Whenever something is likely to produce rain clouds, we immediately carry (cloud seeding operations) out,\u201d he said. On Tuesday, 11 \u200bareas \u200bin Malaysia\u2019s Sarawak state, which borders Borneo island, recorded unhealthy \u200bair quality levels, according to data from Malaysia\u2019s environmental department.<\/p>\n
Sarawak\u2019s education department has also \u2060instructed schools to suspend outdoor activities when temperatures become too high or air quality index readings exceed 100. On Java island, a fire in Mount Bromo national park in East Java province that damaged at least 899 hectares \u200bof land has now mostly been extinguished, head of local disaster mitigation agency Gatot Soebroto said.<\/p>\n
More than 150 personnel were still being deployed on Tuesday to put out the remaining fire, which covered at least two hectares.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JAKARTA \u2013 Indonesia has stepped up efforts to contain forest and land fires across six \u2060priority provinces, deploying…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72384,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2574,42445,28011,22,8,33,5108,9044],"class_list":["post-72383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-japan","tag-climate-change","tag-drought","tag-el-nino","tag-indonesia","tag-japan","tag-nihon","tag-southeast-asia","tag-wildfires"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}