BNPB Notes That Indonesia Has Experienced 18 Incidents Of Forest And Land Fires Over The Past Week

Illustration of fighting forest and land fires or forest and land fires. (Between)

JAKARTA - The National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB) noted that forest and land fires (karhutla) were the highest disasters occurring in the past week, from July 18-24, 2022.

Acting Head of the BNPB Disaster Data, Information and Communication Center Abdul Muhari explained, the number of forest and land fires during this week's period in Indonesia occurred 18 times.

"What does this mean? Even though we still have the rainy season in some places in Indonesia, but also in other parts of our country, the drought is starting to kick in, so the intensity and frequency of forest fires starts to rise," Abdul said in an online disaster briefing at Jakarta, Monday 25 July.

Abdul said that forest and land fires were a concern of the government, namely BNPB, together with the Ministry of Environment and Forestry (KLHK), under the coordination of the Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs, and would hold a joint coordination meeting in the context of preventing and mitigating forest fires.

BNPB data shows that until this week there has been a shift in disasters, no longer flooding, or wet hydrometeorological disasters are again the most dominant. But began to shift to dry hydrometeorology, especially forest fires.

"In the past 1 week, 53.8 hectares of land have been burned," he said.

On the one hand, during this period, Indonesia had a dry hydrometeorological disaster along with a wet hydrometeorology, which resulted in 118 houses being submerged which resulted in 2,430 people being displaced. In addition, the flood also caused 4 houses to be heavily damaged.

Within one week from July 18-24, 2022, 39 hydrometeorological disasters were recorded.

Abdul explained that in Sumatra and Kalimantan, the incidence of flooding began to decrease this week, but there was an increase in the incidence of forest fires. The current focus of BNPB is still dealing with wet hydrometeorological and dry hydrometeorological disasters.