BWS gets ready to respond extreme weather in South Kalimantan

Banjarmasin, S Kalimatan (ANTARA) - The Kalimantan III Center for River Basin (BWS) held a disaster preparedness roll call to deal with unpredictable weather, which easily changes in extreme ways, in South Kalimantan.

"When heavy rain falls there is a potential of floods and landslides, and in dry season like now it has the potential to cause forest and land fires (karhutla)," said Head of BWS III I Putu Eddy Purna Wijaya in Banjarmasin, Tuesday.

The preparedness call at the PUPR Trisakti heavy equipment strorage field was attended by 69 personnel and officials of BWS, South Kalimantan and Banjarmasin Disaster Mitigation Agency (BPBD), and River-care Community (Melingai).

According to him, forest and land fires cause negative impacts such as ecological damage, decreased biodiversity, climate change, and smog.

This condition requires all parties to always be on stand by to take various anticipatory measures to minimize losses, he said.

He revealed that during January-March 2023 there had been 38 floods, followed by drought which caused 405 forest and land fires covering an area of 7,400 hectares during May-August 2023.

"The data proves that the threat of disaster is quite large, especially at this time of the dry season, a lot of land is experiencing drought and is inflammable," he said.

Head of the BWS Disaster Preparedness Task Force said that the aim of the ceremony was to prepare personnel, especially in the Kalimantan III BWS, in anticipating disasters in the region.

The agency readies 3,012 units of gabions, 5,065 units of standard geobags, 1,940 units of geobags, and 100 units of sandbags.

Then BWS prepared excavators, mini and long amphibious excavators, dumptruk, crane truck, selfloaders, pump cars, alkon pumps, boat engine, inflatable boats, forklifts, lighting towers, and geotextile sewing machines.