JAKARTA, Aug 21 — Indonesia will tackle wildfires in Kalimantan as a matter of priority, said the National Agency for Disaster Countermeasure (BNPB) today after identifying a rise in hotspots in the region, which shares a border with Malaysia on the island of Borneo.
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The government's wildfire monitoring website Sipongi Kemenhut recorded 1,250 hotspots this week, up from 1,187 a week earlier, with more than 900 detected in Kalimantan alone. Some regencies in the region are already suffering unhealthy air quality levels.
BNPB said it has deployed helicopters to conduct patrols, seed clouds, and drop water bombs to contain the fires in six priority provinces: Riau, Jambi, South Sumatra, South Kalimantan, Central Kalimantan, and West Kalimantan.
Nearly 13,000 personnel have been assigned to the three provinces in Kalimantan to carry out patrols and ground firefighting operations.
Approximately 3,736 hotspots have been detected so far in August, compared with 758 in July, although the daily hotspot numbers have fallen sharply in recent days.
"The decline (in hotspot figures) is a positive development in forest and land fire monitoring. However, it does not indicate that all the fires have been extinguished or that the risk of forest and land fires has ended," the Indonesian Forestry Ministry said in a separate statement today.
The Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysical Agency expects El Nino to last into early 2027, with the critical period for forest and land fires expected to last from August to September.
Forestry Ministry data showed that 202,004 hectares of land had been hit by wildfire from January to July, surging from 107,465 hectares burned from January to June.
Last week, more than 100 schools were closed in Malaysia's Sarawak state to protect children from worsening haze caused by forest fires in neighbouring Indonesia.
Separately, the Environment Ministry said it has inspected fires within the concession area of the palm oil company PT Bintang Harapan Palma in South Sumatra's Ogan Komering Ilir regency after identifying a number of hotspots.
