January-April, Karhutla In Bengkalis Reaches 200 Hectares Spread Across 24 Points

Rain fires in Riau (ANTARA)

The area of land and forest fires (karhutla) that occurred in Bengkalis Regency, Riau Province, during January to April 2023, reached around 200 hectares spread across 24 villages due to the current dry season. "Precisely, there were 43 incidents spread across 24 villages in Bengkalis Regency and most of them were successfully extinguished," said Bengkalis Police Chief AKBP Setyo Bimo Anggoro, quoted by ANTARA, Sunday, May 21. Most of the forest and land fires occurred in peatlands with a depth of 2-6 meters, making the fire difficult to extinguish. He said, prevention efforts were carried out with a number of parties by carrying out coordination meetings with related agencies between Other Regional Governments, BPBD, TNI, Fire Care Community (API) as well as related officers. "In addition to coordination with a number of parties, the team in the field continued outage. The blackout process varied, some were extinguished for about two weeks or one week, depending on the area area area area as well as conditions in the field both the distance between location, weather, wind direction and the cause of the fire were still being investigated," said the Head of the National Police. Bengkalis in handling carhutla also issued eight standard operating procedures (SOP) including socialization of forest and land fires prevention, routine patrols of fire prevention, integrated patrols, signage and warning boards, outage of sub-districts, blackouts in mineral land, blackouts in peatland and investigations causing forest and forest fires. "The SOP was made to facilitate the National Police personnel, especially Bhabinkamtibmas, to conduct socialization and complaints in handling karhutla to the community," he said.

Until now, the Bengkalis Police have also carried out an investigation into four cases, a case with the scene in Tanjung Leban Village, Bandar Laksaman District, whose status has been raised to the investigation process. "For three other cases, the investigation process is being investigated. The witnesses who have been examined into the four cases are approximately 30 people along with expert witnesses," said the Police Chief.*