Indonesian Wildfires Too Furious For Human Intervention, Official Says

Eric Chaney
Published: October 21,2015

Huge wildfires are raging across Indonesia, and at least one official thinks nothing short of the start of the rainy season will make any progress toward taming the blazes.
There is “no way human intervention can put out the fires,” Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar, Malaysia’s Minister of Natural Resources and Environment, told the Australian Broadcasting Company.

Indonesian fire fighters put out a fire in Ogan Ilir, South Sumatra on September 5, 2015. Haze across much of Southeast Asia mostly comes from forest fires on Indonesia's western island of Sumatra, many of which are deliberately lit to clear land for plantations.
(ABDUL QODIR/AFP/Getty Images)

Malaysia is one of several neighboring nations which are covered in a thick, smoky haze, including Singapore and Thailand.Smoke from the fires, which residents and corporations illegally set to clear land for farming, has forced cancellations of flights and closing of schools, and caused numerous cases of acute respiratory infections.
(MORE: Fires Raging Out of Control in Indonesia)
“It is the habit of local people to burn land during the dry season in the hope that new buds will grow,” Indonesian Major General Hinsa Siburian told the Jakarta Post. “This habit has been passed down for generations but it is unfortunate that this year, the dry season is a bit longer so spot fires have quickly spread.”
Indonesia recently accepted help from Malaysia and Australia in the form of water bombing aircraft, the ABC reports, but as of Tuesday those planes had returned to their respective countries.
Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, spokesman for Indonesia’s National Disaster Mitigation Agency told the Jarkata Post there are currently 11 helicopters and airplanes, 10 from Indonesia and one from Singapore for water bombing and cloud seeding.

A man throws water from a bucket as he tries to extinguish fires near his house in the Ogan Ilir district of South Sumatra, Indonesia.
(Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images)

"To increase the water bombing efforts, the government brought in two units of amphibious aircraft Beriev Be-200 along with 20 crew from Russia. They will land on Wednesday morning in Palembang," he said.Jaafar told the ABC that the blazes were spread across "huge areas" of Indonesia, and even the multinational effort underway will not be enough to put out the fires.
"We hope the rains will come in mid-November,” he said. “It will be able to put out the fires.”
National Disaster Mitigation Agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho told the Associated Press that satellite images from Wednesday show more than 3,200 hotspots, more than two-thirds of which are on Sumatra and Borneo but also appear on other major islands of Java, Sulawesi, Maluku and Papua.
(MORE: Fires Force School Closings in Indonesia)
Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya told AP that some 4.2 million acres of forests and plantation land have been razed by fires in Sumatra and Borneo.
"The government has tried hard to extinguish the wildfires across the country,” Nurbaya said, “but it has gotten out of control.”