2 Districts in Singkawang Kalbar Hit by Karhutla, Natural Officers Have Difficulty in Extinguishing

A joint team put out a forest and land fire (karhutla) in the Jalan Bandara area, South Singkawang District, Singkawang City. ANTARA/Narwati

JAKARTA - Forest and land fires (karhutla) hit the Jalan Bandara area, South Singkawang District, Singkawang City, West Kalimantan (Kalbar), which spread to about five hectares.

Head of Daops Manggala Agni Kalimantan IX/Singkawang Yuyu Wahyudin said the fire occurred in two locations, namely Sedau Village and Pangmilang Village.

From the data collection in the field, the affected land area reached around five hectares, with details of two hectares in Sedau Village and three hectares in Pangmilang Village.

"The joint team continues to work to extinguish it, hopefully the forest fire on the Singkawang Airport Road can be immediately overcome," said Yuyu in Singkawang, Tuesday, quoted by Antara.

He explained, the extinguishing operation has been carried out since Sunday, February 1 and continued until Tuesday, February 3 because the fire had not completely extinguished. K

The fire was also difficult to control because the burned land was peat land with fern vegetation, acacia, oil palm, and shrubs, plus wind conditions of around 11 kilometers per hour which accelerated the spread of fire and smoke.

"The fire is quite difficult to extinguish. Therefore, we will continue to carry out extinguishing activities until the fire is completely extinguished," he said.

Yuyu said that the fire was still visible at several points with thick smoke clouds, so the personnel carried out extinguishing and blocking to prevent the fire from spreading wider.

He added that of the total burned land, the joint team had only managed to extinguish about 2.5 hectares, while the rest was still in the process of being handled.

The land extinguishing operation involved 71 joint personnel from the Manggala Agni Kalimantan IX/Singkawang Daops, Koramil South Singkawang, elements of the South Singkawang District, the Singkawang Brimob Company, the Singkawang Police, the South Singkawang Police, the BPBD City of Singkawang, and the Fire Care Society (MPA) from a number of regions.

In the implementation of the blackout, the team was supported by equipment in the form of water pumps, suction and delivery hoses, personnel transport vehicles, and manual firefighting equipment. Meanwhile, the water source was obtained from a ditch nearby with a width of about one meter and a depth of about one meter.

Yuyu emphasized that the extinguishing operation would continue until all fire points were declared extinguished to prevent the emergence of subsequent fires, given the characteristics of peatland prone to re-burning.