Land fire covers 25 hectares in two weeks in HSU

A HSU's BPBD Task Force member points the location of the land fire in Tapus Village at the beginning of last week. (Antaranews/Eddy Abdillah)

The data is temporary, where the area of burned land is based on estimates,

Amuntai, S Kalimantan (ANTARA) - Land fires in the North Hulu Sungai (HSU) District during August 1 -14 2019 have reached 25 hectares. Land fires were mostly in the Amuntai Tengah Sub-district.

The data source is from the HSU Disaster Mitigation Agency (BPBD) showed one of land fire in the Amuntai Tengah occurred in Pinang Habang Villlage covering an area of 2 hectares,

"The data is temporary, where the area of burned land is based on estimates," said BPBD's Emergency and Logistics Staff Udi Hartono in Amuntai, Thursday.

The fire in Pinang Habang Village took place on August 1, two days later a land fire occurred again in the Amuntai Tengah in Mawar Sari Village covering an area of 3 hectares.

The next Amuntai Tengah area experienced land fires was in the village of Rantawan covering an area of 1.5 ha that occurred on August 6th.

On August 12 it was Karias Village's turn with an area of 0.5 ha burned, fires continued on August 13 in this village with an additional 1.5 ha burned. Total land burnt in Amuntai Tengah during August 1 -14 is estimated at 8.5 ha.

Furthermore, the Paminggir Sub-district covers 7 hectares of burned land, namely in Sapala Village covering 5 hectares and Pal Batu or Kampung Baru 2 hectares.

Tapus Dalam Village in Sungai Pandan Subdistrict (Alabio) experienced a 6.5 ha land fire which occurred on 11, 12, 13 August.

Whereas Kayakah Village in Amuntai Selatan was 2.5 ha in early August and in Banjang Village, Banjang Sub-district 2 ha in August 04.

Various efforts have been made by the forest and land fire task force team to minimize the occurrence of fires, but there are still people who do not care about the danger of haze resulting from burning land.

As a result, over the past week or so, thin and thick haze often envelops the Amuntai and surrounding areas, especially in the morning.

Udi said that the task force was assisted by volunteers scattered in each village to continue to monitor and socialize the dangers of burning land and forests to the community.