Climbing to Mount Rinjani's Anak Dara Hill Temporarily Closed

MATARAM - The climb to the Anak Dara Hill tourist destination at the foot of Mount Rinjani in Sembalun sub-district, East Lombok district, West Nusa Tenggara (NTB) has been temporarily closed after a fire in the local area.

‘All climbers of Anak Dara Hill have been successfully evacuated at the time of the incident and the climb was temporarily closed,’ said Protection Section Head of the East Rinjani Forest Management Unit Lalu Iskandar in Mataram, Antara, Tuesday, 3 September.

The current condition of the fire has been successfully extinguished after joint officers extinguished it, both in the Bukit Anak Dara area and Bukit Selong in the Sembalun area, as well as the hill area that is included in the working area of the Belanting District Resort.

‘The types of burning are mostly weeds, shrubs, lencing trees, bakbakan trees, temek trees, mountain fir trees, acacia trees, and sap trees,’ he said.

The forest and land fires in the Bukit Anak Dara forest area, Bukit Selong, Sembalun Resort working area and Belanting Resort working area occurred on Saturday (31/8) night.

The forest and land fire control team moved to the location of the fire that could be reached by the team to make efforts to extinguish it so that the fire did not spread quickly to other areas.

‘The team brought equipment such as water jet shooters, machetes and natural equipment such as wet wood branches to make efforts to extinguish at fire locations that could be reached,’ he said.

On Monday (2/9), the team continued their journey to the fire hotspot to extinguish the fire and move quickly to the target.

At the location of the fire point, the team then made efforts to extinguish while making firebreaks and when the team was extinguishing strong wind conditions accompanied by a steep location made the team unable to extinguish optimally.

‘The team continued to extinguish the fire point adjacent to Bukit Nanggi to anticipate that the fire would not spread to the Bukit Nanggi location,’ he said.

When making firebreaks, suddenly strong winds caused the fire to quickly spread to other locations, including forest areas RTK 1 / HL 113 and 118 of the Belanting Resort working area, Sambelia District. The team continued to extinguish the fire using makeshift tools.

Team II continued to extinguish the fire that was heading towards Bukit Selong. The fire continued to devour grass, litter and dry bushes until the southern part of Anak Dara Hill was completely burned.