Poisonous Haze thickens over Indonesia's Sumatra, Borneo
Pastor Dale Morgan
Poisonous Haze thickens over Indonesia's Sumatra, Borneo*
JAKARTA, Aug 24 (AFP) Aug 24, 2006
Poisonous, choking haze from fires raging on the jungle-clad Indonesian
islands of Sumatra and Borneo thickened Thursday as officials met to
prepare a plan for battling the blazes.
"We are in a meeting now to coordinate steps to fight the ground and
forest fires and the resulting smoke," said Ma'aruf, a coordinator of
the environmental impact control agency for Riau province.
He said the number of hotspots in Riau itself had fallen to 67 out of a
total of 380 burning across Sumatra, with the impact coming from other
provinces, particularly neighbouring Jambi.
Visibility in Pekanbaru was at around 1,000 meters (yards) at 7:00 am
(O000 GMT) but worsened to 800 meters for two hours before rising again
to around 1,500 meters, said Ibnu, a meteorological official in Riau's
capital Pekanbaru.
Flights from Pekanbaru's airport were unaffected, an official said there.
Burhanuddin, from Riau's health office, said that his office was
monitoring air pollution across various districts but it had not yet
reached a dangerous level.
In Jambi, strong winds had helped clear the sky and improve visibility
from 400 meters to two kilometres over the morning, said local
meteorological official Tobing.
He added however that it could be carrying it to Riau and towards the
Malacca Straits.
The narrow waterway separates Sumatra from peninsular Malaysia, which
has been smothered in this year's haze and already demanded that
Indonesia do more to tackle the annual problem. Singapore and Thailand
have also been affected in recent years.
Earlier this week officials said they would deploy hundreds of police
and troops to fight the fires usually lit to clear land for crops.
On the Indonesian portion of Borneo, a total of 171 hotspots were
detected for Wednesday.
In Pontianak, the capital of Borneo's West Kalimantan province -- which
has also been badly hit by the haze -- visibility at 7:00 am was only
100 meters, said Maroni, from the local meteorology office.
But it improved to more than 5,000 meters four hours later, he said.
The Indonesian government has outlawed land clearing by fire but weak
enforcement means the ban is largely ignored.