Pekanbaru, Riau, (Antarariau.com) - The Agency for Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT) will begin weather modification in Riau on Monday to produce artificial rain for extinguishing forest and land fires in the province, a minister said.
"Forest Fire Affairs Director of the Ministry of Environment and Forestry (LHK), Raffles, has reported that the BPPT will begin the artificial rain operations on Monday," LHK Minister Siti Nurbaya, said when contacted from Pekanbaru on Monday.
She said that she had observed the conditions of forest fires in Riau in the middle of last month. The location is very difficult to reach and efforts to open up lands by setting fires still continued to take place.
This created high potential for the land to be gutted by fires. "Therefore, the government also has directly declared an emergency alert status on land and forest fires in Riau.
The declaration of the emergency status is intended to alert all sides to increase efforts to prevent and handle forest fires so that the fores and land fires in the province would not escalate become as worse as that in 2013 and 2014.
"We have made anticipatory steps and asked all sides to remain alert. Those found burning land in the field should be arrested directly," the minister said.
She also asked her apparatuses in the field to continue intensifying communications with the private sector and local government. "I am still monitoring the developments in the field," she said.
Based on data in Riau s fire emergency Command Post (Posko), the fires have since January this year burnt 379 hectares of land.
The widest burnt areas are located in Bengkali District in the northern part of Riau, some of them are located inside the Siak Kecil Biosphere Nature Preserve in Bukit Batu and Pulau Rupat island.
In the meantime, the head of Pekanbaru s Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG), Sugarin, said that the Terra and Agua satellites on Sunday morning detected 39 hotspots in Riau province.
The hotspots are located in the districts of Bengkalis (15), Meranti (13), Rokan Hulu and Siak respectively four hotspots, Indragiri Hilir (2) and Pelalawan one hotspot.
Earlier, the Riau acting governor said the weather modification operations to produce man-made rain to extinguish forest fires would be conducted for 30 days in March 2015.
Currently there are about 25 tons salt in the Posko, which are the remaining of salt used to induce rain in the province in 2014. For next weather modification operations, another 43 tons of salt will be made available.
"So the volume of salt that will be used to induce rains next week is about 68 tons," the acting governor who is popularly called Andi Rachman, said.
The regional government of Riau in its efforts to put out the forest fires gets assistance from the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) and BPPT.
The operations will be under the responsibility of the BPPT while the BNPB is responsible for making fund available worth Rp16 billion which will be taken from the Rp25 billion budget earmarked for tackling fires.
Artificial Rain To Begin In Riau On Monday
