Jambi Provincial Government Opens Opportunities For Extending Salt Tabur Modified Weather To Prevent Forest And Land Fires Due To Drought

Illustration of forest and land fires extinguishing by modifying the weather by helicopter. (Between-Mushaful)

JAMBI - The Jambi Provincial Government (Pemprov) opens the opportunity to extend weather modifications, aka TMC, seeing the potential for forest and land fires (karhutla) due to drought.

"The Jambi Provincial Government will extend weather modifications if the weather is increasingly extreme by carrying out weather modification technology activities so that artificial rain in Jambi Province is successful, and the evidence was rain with light intensity a few days ago," said Jambi Provincial Secretary (Sekdakov) Sudirman in Jambi, Wednesday, August 23, as reported by Antara.

The TMC was carried out through a Cessna C208 aircraft and a report received from BNPB had carried out TMC from August 15-21, 2023, where the aircraft carried salt with a capacity of 16 tons, in seven days sowing salt and smeared in a cloud position reaching 70 percent.

"So, recently it has been raining because of TMC," said Sudirman.

In recent weeks the weather conditions have been very extreme without rain. This condition is considered by BNPB to be very dangerous for peat areas, because the peat area should not be in a dry position and when dry it will become flammable material.

In the past week, it was the task and role of BNPB to conduct TMC in the Jambi Province area, and there was already rain after TMC was carried out. After this, his party evaluated the activities of TMC.

Weather conditions are drier, it is possible to extend the TMC again and this activity is focused on areas that have the potential for fires, including areas where fires have occurred, especially the western region of Sarolangun and Batanghari, as well as the East region of Jambi, such as East Tanjab, West Tanjab and Muaro Jambi.

"At least this weather modification activity can wet peatlands, so it is not too dry and does not become raw material that triggers forest and land fires," he said.