Peat Land Fire In Natuna Meluasar, BPBD: 300 Hectares For This Sore

The peatland fire in Natuna is expanding to hundreds of hectares. This is based on the monitoring of the Regional Disaster Management Agency (BPBD) of Natuna Regency, Riau Islands (Kepri), Thursday 19 January afternoon.

"Earlier, together with PUPR, we carried out monitoring by air using drones, no less than 300 hectares, for sure we will see tomorrow, the results of this afternoon's mapping," said Head of Emergency and Logistics Division of BPBD Natuna Regency, Zulheppy, in Ranai, Natuna, Thursday, January 19, confiscated by Antara.

According to him, the results of monitoring were no longer visible from the large flames that had occurred before, but the area of the spread of smoke was spreading.

"Large fire has decreased, but the smoke in peatlands continues to spread until it approaches Batubi," he said.

He said the fire scorched the land on the left and right sides of the Batubi-Kelarik (Semala) road because it could not be reached by fire officers.

"This is difficult, and we estimate the impact will be very broad, because it is not affordable, deep, and back there, for the left side the fire will stop because there is a swamp, the right side to Gunung Putri Village smoke continues to spread," he said.

He hopes that it will rain immediately so that the fire in the husks on the peatlands goes out quickly and does not enter the agricultural area belonging to local residents.

"Earlier there was a little rain, but it hasn't been completely extinguished," he said.

He also appealed to residents not to burn land during hot weather, preventing it from being better because extinguishing peatlands like that is difficult.

Previously, based on data from the Natuna Regency Fire Department (Damkar), there had been land fires in several different locations over the past five days on large Natuna Island since Sunday, January 15.

Occurring in South Bunguran, North Bunguran and Northeastern Bunguran, the three were vacant land and one incident in East Bunguran on land owned by residents in the Puak area.