JAKARTA: Indonesia remains on high alert \u200bfor wildfires despite a decline in hotspots over the past week, with the sporadic rainfall still not enough to put them out, a disaster agency official said on Thursday, as students on Borneo island staged protests against the government\u2019s handling of the crisis.<\/p>\n
Indonesia has been battling its most intense forest fires in 11 years, with the El Ni\u00f1o weather phenomenon driving up temperatures and leaving the country\u2019s vast stretches of forest and peatland more vulnerable to \u200cfire.<\/p>\n
The persistent fires \u200chave caused hundreds of thousands of cases of \u200brespiratory \u200cillness \u2060in Indonesia \u200band \u2060badly affected air quality in neighboring Singapore and Malaysia, with the transboundary haze drawing heavy criticism across the region.<\/p>\n
According to data from the EU\u2019s Copernicus climate monitoring service, carbon dioxide emissions from Indonesian fires from October 15 to October 21 reached 14.44 million metric tons, down from 22.22 million tons over the preceding seven days.<\/p>\n
The number of \u201chigh-confidence\u201d hotspots stood at 565 on Thursday, according to Indonesian forest ministry \u2060monitoring platform Sipongi, down from over 1,200 on October 14.<\/p>\n
\u201cBased \u200con the latest developments, the number \u200cof hotspots has shown a decline; however, the trend \u200bremains volatile and is not yet uniform \u200cacross all regions,\u201d Berton Panjaitan, a spokesperson for Indonesia\u2019s disaster mitigation agency, \u200ctold Reuters.<\/p>\n
Indonesia has deployed more than 69,000 firefighting personnel, up from around 44,000 in mid-September, as well as around 50 aircraft to conduct waterbombing and weather modification operations. Authorities are also testing new methods to put out fires, including special chemicals and the use of \u200cdry ice for cloud seeding.<\/p>\n
Indonesia\u2019s dry season started earlier than usual this year and has also lasted longer. \u2060The rainy seasonnormally \u2060starts in October, but the country\u2019s weather agency said it will be delayed until November.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe potential for new hotspots to emerge persists, especially if rainfall remains uneven and the sources of the fires have not been fully addressed,\u201d Berton said.<\/p>\n
At least 100 university students in Banjarmasin in South Kalimantan province staged a protest at the regional house of representatives to demand more concrete action to extinguish the fires, a local news channel showed.<\/p>\n
Hundreds of students in Pontianak in West Kalimantan and Samarinda in South Kalimantan also held demonstrations on Wednesday to protest against the local government\u2019s handling of the fires, according to local \u200bmedia.<\/p>\n
Berton said authorities would maintain \u200bfirefighting efforts and strengthen patrols.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe goal is to prevent new fires and ensure that fires that have been extinguished do not reignite,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
JAKARTA: Indonesia remains on high alert \u200bfor wildfires despite a decline in hotspots over the past week, with the sporadic rainfall still not enough to put them out, a disaster agency official said on Thursday, as students on Borneo island staged protests against the government\u2019s handling of the crisis. Indonesia has been battling its most …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":104780,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104767"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104767\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104781,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104767\/revisions\/104781"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}