Indonesia to Extinguish Forest Fires in Riau Using Water Bombing

Riau, MINA – Riau Provincial Government received assistance from Water Bombing Helicopters (WBH) from the Ministry of Environment and Forestry on Monday.

The helicopter is scheduled to immediately go down to the field to extinguish forest and land fires (Karhutla) on Tuesday.

“The helicopters from the Ministry of Environment and Forestry have arrived in Riau and the helicopters are able to accommodate about one ton of water, and will be operated immediately to extinguish fires in areas that cannot be handled through land,” said Head of Emergency Division of BPBD Riau, Jim Gafur on Monday as quoted from Republika.

He said that a number of hotspots in Rokan Hilir Regency would be extinguished by using helicopters because it was not possible to go by land.

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Gofur mentioned that BPBD Riau is currently working with the Karhutla Task Force team to extinguish the fire that occurred in Riau.

The hotspot, which was originally 75 points, has dropped to 16 after an outage by the ground team.

“Alhamdulillah, Karhutla can still be overcome, there have been blackouts at points where there are many forest and land fires, such as in Pelalawan. There is also a joint team from Manggala Agni, Army/Police, BPBD and others,” he said.

He said there were several areas that could not be reached by land and needed helicopter assistance to carry out the blackout. Other heli assistance that has been proposed is still in process.

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Karhutla in Riau Province has continued to occur in recent weeks. Based on data from the Pekanbaru Meteorology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG), 8 City Regencies have occurred forest and land fires. (T/RE1)

Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)