A Total Of 4,345 Forest And Land Fire Points Detected In South Kalimantan

The fire was flooded at a forest and land fire point in Liang Anggang District, Banjarbaru, South Kalimantan on August 3, 2023. (Between/Tumpal Andani Aritonang)

JAKARTA - The Regional Disaster Management Agency (BPBD) of South Kalimantan (Kalsel) said as many as 4,345 hotspots were detected related to forest and land fires (kathutla) in the local province from June to August 2023.

Based on data from the Disaster Management Operations Control Center (Pusdalops PB) of South Kalimantan BPBD as of Sunday (6/8) afternoon, the area of forest and land fires reached 1,170.89 hectares with thousands of hotspots spreading in 13 districts and cities.

"The city of Banjarbaru still dominates forest and land fires," said South Kalimantan BPBD Head Raden Suria Fadliansyah when confirmed in Banjarmasin, Sunday night.

The city is not detected too much heat source, which is only about 164 hotspots, but forest and land fires occur almost every day.

"The city of Banjarmasin has the least forest and land fires events," he said.

Suria said the area of forest and land fires in Banjarbaru City reached 464.94 hectares, then the second largest area, namely Tanah Laut Regency reached 279.13 hectares and then followed by Banjar Regency with a forest and land fires area of approximately 223.8 hectares.

According to Antara, the three adjacent areas are areas prone to forest and land fires with a total area of 967.87 hectares and a total of around 1,605 hot sources.

Meanwhile, based on data recorded as many as 401 land fires with an area of 1,082.19 hectares and 21 forest fires with an area of 88.7 hectares.

Previously, Suria said that the South Kalimantan BPBD had received six helicopters from the National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB) to handle forest and land fires in areas that were difficult for the ground task force to pass.

Overall, data on the area of forest and land fires which reached 1,170.89 hectares in South Kalimantan is an incident that has been handled by the Karhutla task force.

The data does not include forest and land fires that are not handled by officers, quite a lot of which are not covered by officers due to the location of the hotspots which are difficult for the ground task force to pass before the arrival of helicopters to deal with forest and land fires.