Banjarmasin, S Kalimatan (ANTARA) - The South Kalimantan Disaster Mitigation Agency (BPBD Kalsel) has detected as many as 7,735 hotspots that cause forest and land fires (karhutla) based on monitoring of “Sipongi” application and air patrols.
The number of hotspots has highly increased compared to last week with 4,543 hotspots, based on the data of the Center for Disaster Management Control Operation (Pusdalops PB) of the agency as of Saturday (August 19, 2023) 23.55 Wita (Central Indonesia Time Zone).
“The most hotspots were in South Hulu Sungai (HSS) District around 1,380 with the area of karhutla reaching 77 hectares,” said Head of South Kalimantan BPBD Raden Suria Fadliansyah when confirmed in Banjarmasin, Sunday.
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From the result of monitoring by app and air patrol, he said, sequentially there were three districts with the most hotspots detected, namely Tanah Laut 1,363, Banjar 1,292, and Balangan 1,150.
“Banjarmasin is not worrying there were at leat six hotspots,” he said.
However, he continued, Banjarbaru dominated the area of karhutla. The agency almost every day handled forest and land fires here which so far has reached 708 hectares, even though there were not so many hotspots in the city.
Then the second largest area of fires was Tanah Laut reaching 424 hectares, while the third was Banjar District covering an area of 287 hectares.
Overall in 13 districts and cities in South Kalimantan, the Forest and Land Fire Task Force has handled 1,762 hectares of area affected with 650 incidents, including 29 forest fires and 621 land fires.
Basen on ANTARA's monitoring on several locations of fires, ground task force officials admitted that several locations were difficult to reach because of not accessible and some might be not recorded.
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7,735 hotspots detected in South Kalimantan
Minggu, 20 Agustus 2023 20:11 WIB
Fire fighters put out the remaining embers of forest and land fires which have burned approximately 10 hectares of peatland in Landasan Ulin Selatan Urban Village, Banjarbaru City, South Kalimantan, Monday (Aug 14, 2023). (ANTARA/Tumpal Andani Aritonang)
