JAKARTA, Aug 31 (Reuters) – Indonesia is inspecting 19 companies linked to wildfires in Sumatra and Kalimantan as the government ramps up efforts to stop the fires from spreading further, officials said on Monday.
In the middle of a severe dry season, the Southeast Asian nation has been battling wildfires for weeks, with the smoke raising the risk of respiratory illnesses not only for humans, but also for the country’s orangutan population.
Satellite imaging has revealed that a total of 42 companies hold concessions with high wildfire potential, Rizal Irawan, a senior official at the country’s Environment Ministry, told reporters.
The government subsequently identified fires covering a combined 11,047 hectares (27,298 acres) across seven provinces in concessions managed by 19 of the companies, he said, an area nearly twice the size of Manhattan.
“We will investigate whether the fires started accidentally or were deliberately set. However, regardless of the cause, strict liability applies whenever a fire occurs within a concession area,” Rizal said.
He did not name the companies nor disclose the type of concessions they hold, or their business sector. He added that the government will continue to investigate the remaining 23 companies facing fire risks.
Wildfires burned nearly 95,000 hectares of land in Indonesia in July, almost doubling the damage done in the previous six months as the El Niño weather pattern intensified, data provided by the forestry minister showed earlier this month.
Authorities are ramping up efforts to control the fires, focusing on six provinces in Sumatra and Kalimantan, the Indonesian portion of Borneo island, said Berton Panjaitan, spokesperson for Indonesia’s disaster mitigation agency, BNPB.
BNPB will deploy some of its 48,000 officers to guard certain areas and prevent new fires being ignited, Berton said.
Over 1,400 volunteers have been deployed to help the authorities contain fires on the ground and more are being recruited, Rizal added.
The government has also deployed 34 aircraft to conduct water bombing operations, but their flights have been disrupted by thick haze and poor visibility, as well as limited water availability near the locations of the fires.
Separately, Indonesia’s Transport Ministry said on Monday that it has issued special permits for 35 foreign aircraft to enter the country’s airspace and beef up its aerial firefighting capabilities.
According to the European Union’s climate monitoring service Copernicus, carbon emissions from Indonesian fires in the last seven days hit 17.1 million metric tons, 429% higher than the seasonal mean and second only to Russia.
(Reporting by Fransiska Nangoy; Editing by David Stanway)
